First given at the little church in Lynnville (IL) on January 11, 2004 and slightly updated as to dates, etc. for today, 2022…

  THE NAMING OF CATS

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,

It isn’t just one of your holiday games;

You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,

Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,

Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—

  All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,

  Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:

Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—

  But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,

  A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,

Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,

  Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,

  Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,

Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—

  Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,

  And that is the name that you never will guess;

The name that no human research can discover—

  But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,

  The reason, I tell you, is always the same:

His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation

Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:

His ineffable effable

Effanineffable

Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

       These words are from the ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’, written by T. S. Elliot and first published in 1939. Some of you may recognize them as being the lyrics from one of the songs in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical, ‘Cats’, which is based on that book. I use it here to make a point and ask the question… what’s in a name?

       Time was when people believed that each name meant something in particular, and great care was used when naming an individual. Native Americans have always taken pride in naming infants with regard to some significant event surrounding their birth, while for many years Europeans have had countless numbers of books telling what each name means. Indeed, we have record in the Bible of what different names meant, and even of names being changed… Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, which we’re told meant ‘rock’, and Saul became Paul after his visit from the Lord. And yet, as Shakespeare’s Juliet ponders, as she considers Romeo’s family name and the ongoing history of violence between their families, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!”

       How many names are you known by? Most people call me ‘Steve’, but there have been… and are… many others. When I was little, many at my church in Hartford called me ‘Stevie’, and when I chance to visit there today, some still do. I have been called Steven, Mr. Luebbert, Rev, and when I had a CB I was known as ‘Busted Knuckles’. For most of the years that I worked over at Naples I was known as ‘Ed’, for reasons that would take far too long to tell here. My point is that I have been known and identified by many different names and titles over the years, and I generally have answered to all of them… like I’ve always said, I don’t care what you call me as long as you call me for dinner!

       In the chapter leading up to the one I read from this morning, God had been reproaching Israel for their stubborn disobedience, but here He tells them to, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name;”  

       Some of you reading/hearing this knew my brother or met him when he was at the church I preached at in the early 2000s a couple of times with our mother. And many more of you might remember hearing me ask for your prayers for the both of them from time to time. While he had always been ‘Mike’ to the family, he had gotten the nickname of ‘Lou’… short, I always assumed, for Luebbert… when he was in high-school, and that was the name that all of his friends and co-workers knew him by. Indeed, if I were to ask any of them about ‘Mike’ they wouldn’t have known who I was talking about… and it took awhile for me to know who they meant when they might call and ask for ‘Lou’.

What you don’t know about him is just how sick he really was. You see, unbeknownst to any of us, Mike had become a drug-addict and alcoholic at a very early age, and in spite of being ‘forced’ to clean up his act by different employers and mom on more than one occasion, he would always wind-up going back to that way of life… and this abuse of his body wound up destroying it. I won’t pretend to remember everything that mom had ever told me, but I know he was diabetic, had hepatitis, and cancer, just to name a few things. Indeed, the doctors had given him less than a year to live… for several years! He died peacefully in his sleep the Friday after Christmas of 2003… though nobody knew it until the following Sunday. So it was that I spent the Saturday after that at a memorial service in his honor in Collinsville… and I have to say that I learned a lot about my little brother while there.

You see, it was three or four years before he died that he finally did get himself straight… and not long after that that he found his way back to God and Jesus. And since that time he had used every ounce of strength and courage that he could muster to help others get themselves straightened out and back onto the pathway of life, as it were! Over a hundred of them were at that memorial service who had come to pay their respects, and many of them rose to give testimony as to how great ‘Lou’ had been and how much he had helped them get their own lives in order. No matter how much physical pain he might have been in, he would always be willing to get out and help or talk or comfort or strengthen any of them that needed it at any time.

Every one of them knew him as ‘Lou’, and indeed some learned for the first time that his real name was ‘Mike’. But there were also just about as many family members, friends, and church family there that knew and remembered him as ‘Mike’, or even ‘Mikey’… not to mention ‘dad’, ‘uncle’, ‘cousin’, or ‘son’… and many of those didn’t know who ‘Lou’ was until that service!

I must confess to have felt both proud of my little brother… and a little taken-aback by all of that… and… yes, just a little envious! I remembered the kid that I had teased to the point of anger on occasion… the one who wasn’t always real good at doing what he was supposed to do… the one who stole cigarettes from the neighborhood store and was caught smoking them on the playground when he was seven or eight! And in recent years I had been made aware of his really bad habits… the ones that killed him… and yet, here he had gotten turned around and touched more people in the last few years of his life and helped them to get straight, and many of them to find God, than many of us do in a lifetime! Would that I could affect so many people so openly! And yet… I remembered him telling me once, and mom confirming it at another time, that it was reading some of the articles that I had written in the monthly newsletter that helped inspire him to work as hard as he did to follow the path back to ‘church’ and God… as mom put it once, he was awful proud of his big brother, as well!

I’m sure that there were many prayers being offered up that day, as well as the days before and since, in his name… and many of them would have been for ‘Lou’ and many would have been for ‘Mike’. Do you think God knew who they were talking about? Of course! By the same token, God knows your name, as well!

In Luke 12, verses 6-7, Jesus asks, “What is the price of five sparrows? A couple of pennies? Yet God does not forget a single one of them.  And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to him than a whole flock of sparrows.” If He knows the number of hairs on your head, can you at all doubt that he remembers your name? And our verses today tell us even more!

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;…  when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you… When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Our God not only knows us… He claims us as His! We belong to Him! And He watches over us every minute of every day and protects us!

My point is that every one of us are probably known by many different names, or at least for wearing many different ‘hats’, if you will. And I ask you to consider some of them for a moment… how do your co-workers look at you… who do they know you as? How about your neighbors and friends? Do they see a different person than the one sitting here today? Or do they see the image of our Lord reflected in your face, and in your actions?

Whenever, and However, you might commune with our Lord, I ask you to consider this… if God knows you by name… and knows each of the names that you go by… are each of those names… those personas… worthy of Him? In other words, if God were to summon you by any of the names that you might be known by, would that summons cause you great joy… or great fear?

Let all of God’s people say Amen!