I’ve been reading about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection over the past few days and I was struck again by the verses below in John’s account of those days. Mary Magdalene, a friend of Jesus, has arrived at the tomb where His body was laid but can’t find Him. As she is casually talking to two angels at the tomb (I’m unaware if she realised they were angels) she turns and sees Jesus but doesn’t recognise Him. Here is the account of what happens next.

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). John 20:15-16

I have so many questions around what Jesus must have looked like for Mary not to recognise Him but I love the fact that she only realises who He is when he speaks her name.

What was it about her name?

I’ve been discovering how powerful names are over the past number of years. A number of years ago we developed a 6 week course which we still run in local schools, The course is designed to help pupils, at pivotal stages in their development, to understand who they are, what their strengths are, how they are wired etc. One of the most powerful parts of the course is an exercise we do around names. We look up the meaning of each of the childrens names and in class we share that meaning in front of the whole group and how we think that meaning works or influences their life. That exercise is the one most pupils comment on after the course and during it we see pupils well up, lean in, and often there is silence in the room – which really is a miracle.

One of the things that really shocked me about this lesson was how often the name meaning described the pupil (at their own admission), my favourite one being a boy who’s name meant fiery not being in the class that day as he’d been fighting at break time! Or we would see the opposite, where a pupils name was 180° away from who they are.

I started to understand that our names are the things spoken over us the most, and that calling someone by their is actually a prophetic act, whether the caller realised that or not. So my son is called Caleb, which means wholehearted and devoted, so everyone I call his name that is what I am declaring over him. Guess what? That is what he is like. I even started to notice that some kids called the same names at times had similar traits (this isn’t an exact science of course) which further underlined my curiosity.

Of course, this shouldn’t have shocked me.

Throughout the scriptures we see people renamed often because they understood that a name was about so much more than something you shouted when dinner was ready. Sometimes this was a language or culture thing (Babylonian exile), but often people renamed each other as a promotion/demotion or a revealing of task – (Moses changed his assistant Hoshua meaning salvation to Joshua meaning Jehovah saves). We also see that God renamed people too. Here are a couple of examples

• Abram (exalted father) to Abraham (father of nations/multitude)
• Sarah (princely) to Sarai (mother of princes)
• Jacob (cheater) to Israel (Gods people)
• Simon Peter to Peter (the rock)
• Saul (asked for) to Paul (little)

So back to where we started. Mary was unaware of Jesus identity until He did one very specific thing – he spoke her name. When Jesus calls us by our names something amazing happens. It helps us realise that we are known by the one who holds it all together but it also calls forth who we are and speaks it into being.

So what’s in a name? It turns out….. Quite a lot!