A Rose By Any Other Name

Here is the 2nd of the Friday Night in the Garden Vespers series.

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And Juliet spoke, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene ii).

In Shakespeare’s classical tale of star-crossed lovers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet and fall in love. But it is a love doomed from the start as they are members of two warring families. In Act II, scene ii Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks, to “deny (his) father” and instead be “new baptized” as Juliet’s lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play.

In a similar passage, the physicist Richard Feynman tells a story about naming birds.

The next day, Monday, we were playing in the fields and this boy said to me, “See that bird standing on the stump there? What’s the name of it?”

I said, “I haven’t got the slightest idea.”

He said, “It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you much about science.”

I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesn’t tell me anything about the bird. He taught me “See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird–you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way,” and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on. (from “What is Science?” by Richard Feynman)

We live in a world much like that of the Corinthians two thousand years ago; we want exact names for things, we want a technicolor world but we want it in black-and-white. As the Jews clamored for miraculous demonstrations and the Greeks wanted philosophical wisdom when it came to hearing the Gospel message (1 Corinthians 1: 22), so do we minimalize the impact of the Gospel today.

But where is the power to change the course of history in the simple good works of people? Where did Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the others in Germany during the 1930’s and 1940’s find the strength to stand up against injustice and oppression when all the other people could not? Where did the young people of Birmingham find the strength they needed to withstand the torrents of water and the dogs when they sought equality some forty years ago? Where will we find the strength and power to combat hunger and homelessness in a world that has lost its direction today?

When Jesus first proclaimed the Good News some two thousand years ago, he offered healing to those who society said could not be healed, he offered sight to those who could not see, and hope to those who society had cast aside and rejected. But more importantly, He empowered the disciples to do the same thing.

It is the power of the Gospel, the Good News, that enabled first the twelve disciples and the seventy-two to take that message of healing and empowerment through the Galilee. And when they had returned, they told of all that they had done, healing and bringing hope to the people. It was a message that had not been told nor heard for many years. It is a message that we have forgotten as well.

Somewhere in the course of time, we have come to think that power comes from either the barrel of a gun or the size of one’s checkbook. We seek rational and logical explanations. But the power of the Gospel is not found in such things.

The power of the Gospel comes in its message of hope and healing, of justice and freedom. It is found in the ability to change people’s lives. It is certainly not logical or rational because it offers the same for all, no matter who they are, in a society that says who you are, where you were born, the color of your skin, the amount of money in your wallet are what matter.

We are challenged today to see beyond the words, to see the meaning and the Spirit. Remember what Paul told the Corinthians,

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” (1 Corinthians 1: 26 – 31)

We are challenged to not hear the Gospel message but to lead the life that comes when one accepts the Gospel message.