2 Epiphany Year A 1/18/2026
Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Everyone…
Younger and older…
No matter who you are…
No matter your status in this world…
People like to be called by their name.
Not, “Hey over there!” or whatever…
We want to be called by our name.
“Good to see you, Mark!”
Names are important…
They give us a sense of identity.
They are part of who we are…
An expression of our personality, our style, our personhood.
Our name…
It means something to us.
I know when Tera and I were thinking about names for our children…
We didn’t just pick a name out of a hat…
We thought of family names, names of friends,
names that we heard in our life experience that we liked…
We paid attention to the way the name sounded…
The way the name sounded with the last name…
With a middle name…
Before we arrived at Theodore’s name…
We had fun thinking of Tera’s fathers name and my father’s name…
But we didn’t quite like the sound of “Arnold Donald” …
It’s a little hard to say.
We looked up the meaning of the names.
How popular they were…
How long they were.
What the initials might look like.
There is a lot in a name.
In the Old Testament, names were chosen for different purposes.
A person would receive their name because of an action or a characteristic that they had.
Moses received his name because the word Moses means “drawn out” or “pulled from water” – just as the baby Moses was pulled out of the Nile River by Pharoah’s daughter in Exodus 2.10.
He was named after that moment.
The patriarch Isaac’s name means “laughter.”
He was named from the story where his parents, Abraham and Sarah, laughed at the miraculous news of having a child in their old age.
So they named him “laughter.”
Esau’s name means “hairy” because he was born with lots of hair.
His twin brother, Jacob, his name means “he who follows the heel,” stemming from the biblical story of Jacob being born holding his twin brother Esau’s heel.
God later changed Jacob’s name to Israel…
Which is where we get the name for the nation of Israel.
The name Israel means “one who struggles with God” because Jacob wrestled with God in Genesis 32.22-32.
Our reading from Isaiah also talks about someone who is named.
In the beginning of our text, we read:
The Lord called me before I was born,
while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.
Without any context we might think this is the referring to the prophet Isaiah (speaking of himself) …
But he is describing a Servant of God.
A suffering Servant.
As Christians we believe Isaiah is describing the call and mission of the Messiah – Jesus the Christ.
Before Jesus was born and placed in a manger in Bethlehem…
God called him…
And while he was in the womb of Mary God named him.
The rest of Isaiah 49 speaks of the ministry of Jesus…
Saying that it is in Christ that God calls Israel to himself.
In our Gospel reading Simon gets a new name…
A name given by Jesus himself…
It reads:
Andrew brought Simon to Jesus,
who looked at him and said,
“You are Simon son of John.
You are to be called Cephas”
(which is translated Peter).
Jesus changed his name to Peter which means “rock” or “stone.”
And this is meaningful to us, as well.
For as Christians…
Being baptized into Christ’s death and rising again out of the water into the resurrection of Jesus…
We are no longer our own person…
But we belong to God…
Co-heirs with Christ Jesus…
A new family…
A new name…
We are Christ’s own possession…
A people of God.
Our identity is no longer what we were before…
Before we had faith in Christ Jesus.
Once we were not God’s people…
But in conversion we become God’s people…
We become children of God.
With a new identity…
And the name that we have is now included in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
A reference to the book that is described in the Book of Revelation…
(Revelation 13:8, 17:8, 20:12, 21:27)
Even Jesus speaks of our names being written down…
He said in the Gospel of Luke:
…rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
(Luke 10.20)
When we receive Jesus by his grace…
And by faith confess him as Lord and Savior…
Our identity, our name (if you will) is hidden in Christ forever.
As it says in our Prayer Book:
We are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked
as Christ’s own for ever.
That is our identity…
As Christians, we are children of God.
In our world, our culture is all about identity…
That’s a huge thing in our world.
We are constantly told to identify with something.
Some of this is inherent in our nature…
We want to be accepted…
To have our people group that we identify with.
You might remember in high school how there were always the nerds, the jocks, the preps, and other groups.
Often teenagers dress a certain way to display their identity within this cultural milieu…
What group they belong with.
But things don’t change much as we move on from there.
Society is always trying to name us…
To give us an identity.
In our politics we are expected to “pick-a-side” that we belong to.
Are we under the name Republican or under the name Democrat…
In North America, we are often asked what is the name of our racial group…
Who do we belong to?
Who do we belong to in our gender, in our sexuality,
in our jobs, in our sports teams,
in our nationality, in our religious or spiritual groups,
in our denomination, in our geography…
We are constantly bombarded with the identity question…
The labels…
What is the name that we belong to?
And with the search of who we belong to…
Culture often tells us that our name, our identity comes from within us…
From deep inside us.
That if we look hard enough inside…
We will find our true self.
“Follow your heart” and find your real meaning.
But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we find our self…
We find our identity…
Not from within or by the groups in our culture…
But by our baptism in Jesus.
We identify with the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Our identity is in Christ.
Our society and culture pose a great challenge for us though…
For us as people of God.
Because the desire to have a place,
to fit in,
to identify with a group in this world…
The urge is strong…
The desire is there…
But the question is: Who is naming us?
Do we let our society name us?
Or do we let God name us?
Do we let society say who we are?
Or do we let God proclaim who we are?
The Bible says:
For [God] chose us in him before the creation of the world…
It says:
In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ…
(Ephesians 1:4-5)
The Bible says:
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. … the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.
And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
(Romans 8:14-17)
Friends,
By God’s grace he names us…
Our identity is in him…
And our life is hidden in Christ Jesus.
The good news today…
Is that in Christ Jesus we are made new.
And we become children of God.
Our name and our identity are in Christ.
I want to close today with the first verses of our Psalm…
Psalm 40… One of my favorites…
Listen again to what God has done for you…
I waited patiently upon the Lord;
he stooped to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay;
he set my feet upon a high cliff and made my footing sure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God;
many shall see, and stand in awe,
and put their trust in the Lord.
Happy are they who trust in the Lord!
Amen.
