RCL Proper 22A [i]
30 August 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Church
Surrey BC
A name not chosen
When I was born in 1953 in a US Air Force hospital in South Ruislip, it was the practice for the British registrar for births to travel the maternity wards to register the births of infants. I imagine them carrying the traditional long-form birth register and their fountain pens. They also brought with them the unbending formality and authority of the British civil service: What is written is written. Change almost always requires a private member’s bill in the House of Commons.
It turns out that my parents had agreed on the name of a girl but not a boy. So, when the registrar arrived at my mother’s bedside and asked what was name of the child, she quickly said, “Richard Geoffrey”, a combination of my father’s and my mother’s brother’s first names. Thus it was recorded for all time: this child, the son of Richard Donald Leggett and Thelma Jane Leggett née Broom, shall be known as Richard Geoffrey Leggett.
The only problem was that no one had told my father. He arrived sometime later and asked my mother, “How is Mark Andrew?” She replied, “Well, I don’t know about Mark Andrew, but Richard Geoffrey is doing well.” Fortunately for me – and for my mother – my father was not unhappy with the choice and the local member of Parliament was not required to rise in the House on matter of private privilege.
If your years growing up were anything like mine, the only time you heard your middle name was when your parents wanted your attention or you were in trouble. But about thirty years or so ago, I realized that I liked my middle name – my uncle is quite a character and will turn 100 this year – and I started using it in almost all official and public media. I am Richard Geoffrey, a name that identifies me with my family but as importantly distinguishes me within that network of relationships.
Names are two-edged swords.
I find that names are two-edged swords. On the one side, a name can be restrictive. Our names carry a story with them and also, as I mentioned above, distinguish us within a network of relationships. When my younger son was a teenager, now some twenty years or so ago, he came back from a trip to Kerrisdale with some of his friends from Magee High School. He looked so glum that I imagined something really terrible had happened. When I asked him about this, Owen looked at me and asked, “Do you and Mum know everybody?” It turns out that, in Owen’s version of the story, there was not a single place he went that day that someone didn’t say, “Owen Porter Leggett, how are your Mum and Dad?” Poor Owen was trying to spread his wings a little, but his flight range was limited by his name.
But at the same time, a name can be liberating. We can celebrate how a name proclaims our individuality within our relationships, a name can become a talisman for our particular gifts and talents. Right now I can tell you this: if you want someone to help you with historical research, call Richard Geoffrey Leggett or David Michael Porter Leggett. We’re the historians in our circle. But if you want someone to help you write a young adult fantasy novel, then call Owen Thomas Porter Leggett or Paula Lee Porter Leggett. Within our family, it’s Owen and Paula who have the greater imaginative forces.
So it is, with great respect for William Shakespeare, that I disagree that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Names shape who we are and we shape what our names mean to those around us.
The God who likes their name.
When Moses encounters the living God in the flaming bush on Sinai, his desire to know the name of this God is not an innocent question. Divine names in the ancient world were more restrictive than liberating. Knowing a god’s name gave the petitioner some control over what that divine being might or might not do. This summer’s blockbuster film, The Odyssey, for example, is about human beings and divinities trying to control one another – with tragic results for those who are caught in the middle or who fail to invoke the right god for the right purpose at the right time.
Moses is aware of how dangerous it can be to work with a deity. This One has appropriately appeared in the midst of a burning bush and asked that Moses who has escaped the frying pan of Egyptian justice to jump into the fire of emancipating an enslaved people. Is it any wonder that Moses wants to know a bit more about the One who making such an ask?
But the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will not be confined by giving a name that might give Moses some control. When asked to give a name, what is grammatically called a noun, God answers with a verb, ‘I am who I am’ or ‘I will be who I will be’. It is of the very essence of God to be free from any limitations that a name impose upon God’s freedom of action. J. B. Phillips, an English New Testament scholar, once wrote a book with the title, Your God Is Too Small, a reminder that we often wish to put God in a box rather than acknowledge that our God is a desert God, not a tame God.
Believing in such a God means recognizing that faith requires taking risks. As much as we would like security, believing in the God of Moses, the God of Jesus, sets us out on a journey towards a destination along a path with many unexpected twists and turns. What we can rely on is that we do not travel alone – we travel as a community, we travel in the company of all those who have gone before us, we travel in the company of the God who created all that is, seen and unseen, the God who in Jesus shares our flesh and blood, the God who in the Spirit leads us into truth and wisdom.
The God of the infinitely more
When Paula and I came to Canada in 1987, we were not only changing countries, we also changed churches. Despite our common heritage, Episcopalians in the US and Anglicans in Canada have differing forms of governance, differing cultures and differing worship. One of the texts that quickly caught my heart is one we frequently say at the end of the eucharist:
Glory to God,
whose power, working in us
can do infinitely more
than we can ask or imagine.
Glory to God from generation to generation,
in the church and in Christ Jesus,
for ever and ever. Amen. [ii]
Each time I say I find myself pondering the mystery of God who is unbound by human expectations, but who seeks us out to be co-workers in achieving God’s purposes – renewal, restoration, reconciliation, revelation. Right now, in this place and in this time, ‘I am’ is at work, doing infinitely more than we expect – because that is God’s very essence, that is God’s ‘name’. This God who chooses verbs rather than nouns to tell us about God’s very self invites us to live Christ’s risen life, to bring life to others, to give light to the world, to remain firm in the hope set before us, so that we and all God’s children shall be free. [iii] Blessed be the name of the Lord, from this time forth and forevermore.
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