What's in a name?
Learning from the Dread Pirate Roberts
Going through these old sermons, I was surprised to find that I preached on The Princess Bride more than once. I should not have been; I love this movie! One of the clever features in the film is the idea of The Dread Pirate Roberts, an otherwise common name made infamous by reputation and assumptions. It helps us appreciate the importance of names as character references rather than mere labels.
In the wacky fairy tale, “A Princess Bride,” by William Goldman, a girl named Buttercup falls in love with a farm boy named Westly. Westly wants to marry Buttercup, but knowing he’s merely a poor farm boy, he decides he must go off to sea to earn his fortune. He tells Buttercup to wait for him.
Tragically, she gets word that his ship was attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts, and everybody knows the Dread Pirate Roberts never leaves anyone alive.
She’s heartbroken, and vows never to love again. Five years later, the prince of the kingdom, Humperdink, chooses Buttercup to be his bride, and even though she does not love him, she knows it’s his right to choose a bride from among all the girls in the kingdom.
But before the wedding, she gets kidnapped. The kidnappers don’t get away clean, though.
They’re pursued by a mysterious masked man, who wears all black. One by one, he vanquishes the kidnappers, and takes Buttercup as his own prisoner.
And She’s livid. She says, “I know who you are; you are the Dread Pirate Roberts. Admit it.”
“With pride,” he says.
She goes on, “You killed my true love.”
He admits it’s probably true, saying if he ever left anybody alive, then word would spread the dreaded pirate had gone soft, and then it would be work, work, work, all the time.
And besides, he says, you couldn’t have really loved him, since you’re willing to marry the prince. She tells him this marriage has nothing to do with love. She says she died the day she got word Westly died, and would never love again.
And at that point, as it goes in fairy tales, the Dread Pirate Roberts reveals himself to be none other than Westly himself.
She says, “How can you be the Dread Pirate Roberts, since he’s been marauding for over twenty years and you’ve only been gone for five?”
He explains how the Dread Pirate Roberts made him a protégé, and taught him to fight, to sail, and everything else about being a pirate. Apparently, Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. So one day, Westly says, “he took me to his cabin and told me his secret.
“‘I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts,’” he said. “‘My name is Ryan. I inherited this ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me.
The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts, either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.’”
Then he explained the name was the important thing. The name inspired fear. Fear caused people to surrender. People heard the name Roberts, and right away they accorded him respect because of what his name represented.
Westly went on, “So we sailed ashore, took on an entirely new crew and he stayed aboard for awhile as first mate, all the time calling me Roberts. Once the crew believed, he left the ship and I have been Roberts ever since.”
Westly’s explanation sounds sort of like a franchise. The first time I lived in Tuscaloosa, Dreamland Barbecue enjoyed a reputation for great ribs. It was the only Dreamland in the world as far as I know.
Now there are Dreamland Barbecues all over Alabama, and people assume their ribs are good, too, because of the reputation of the one here in Tuscaloosa. There’s nothing in the name “Dreamland,” by itself, of course, that would make one think of good ribs, just as there’s nothing in the name “Roberts” that would inspire fear and respect.
It’s what people came to associate with the names – a certain set of assumptions and expectations – that made the names important.
This idea about names comes right out of biblical times. In today’s gospel lesson, which because of all the “thees” and “thous” sounds a bit confusing, Jesus talks about the name of God and His own name.
“Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me.”
Now if we’re astute biblical scholars, we’re thinking, “Wait a minute. Nobody knows the name of God. In ancient times, the name of God was so revered and so sacred, only the High Priest knew it. He would say it only once a year, alone in the inner sanctuary, on the Day of Atonement.
Only when he got ready to retire, like the Dread Pirate Roberts, would he pass on the secret name to his successor. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, a high priest died before he passed it on, and it’s been lost to us ever since.”
So how could Jesus go on to say, “I kept them in thy name, which thou hast given me,” if they never even knew what the name was?
Well, in biblical times, names carried a lot more significance than they do today, even more than the name “Dreamland.”
Sometimes, when the Bible refers to a name, it means not the label by which someone is called, but the entire essence and personality of the person.
When Jesus says, “Keep them in thy name,” He means, “Keep them in the essence and personality of God.” We get a clue of this when He goes on to say, “that they may be one, even as we are one.”
Part of the essence of God is the perfect love shared among the divine Persons which we call the unity of the Trinity.
That’s what Jesus means by the name of God. By coming among us as one of us in the Incarnation, Jesus revealed the essence and personality of God. That’s what Jesus means when He says, “thy name, which thou hast given to me.” Jesus says, by keeping them in the name of God, they’ve been protected from evil, and none was lost other than Judas.
And now, as He contemplates leaving them so that He may reclaim His divinity, He prays that His followers will always be encompassed in that divine essence and personality.
Of course, if the followers of Jesus remain enveloped in an other-worldly essence, they’re going to be different. They’re not going to fit in the world any more. In fact, they will often be hated for it. That’s because they are not really going to belong to the world any more, at least, not completely. They will belong to God.
But just because they don’t belong to the world, Jesus does not want them taken out of the world, not yet.
He wants them to remain in the world so they can continue His ministry. He wants them to go out and spread the truth. He wants them to be “consecrated” that is, set apart, in the truth.
And we know His prayer was granted. His disciples did go out and establish churches, and through these churches, they spread the truth.
They invited others into this divine essence and personality, to share in this Holy name, to become consecrated in the truth.
But ironically, they did not accomplish this while Jesus remained with them physically. They accomplished it only after receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift we’ll celebrate next week on the Day of Pentecost.
They went from being a confused, scared, and often selfish collection of individuals to becoming a force of change, willing to sacrifice, willing to brave danger, willing to lay down their lives for the truth.
Their transformation, even more than their eye witness testimony, confirmed the truth they sought to spread.
This Sunday, we’re at an in-between time. We celebrated the feast of the Ascension this past Thursday, and we will celebrate the Day of Pentecost next Sunday.
So now we’re right in between them – a time of waiting, just as the disciples waited, between the time Jesus left them a final time, and the time they received this powerful gift of the Holy Spirit.
What did they think about? Did they have any idea about the transformation they would undergo? Did the prospect of change make them uncomfortable?
For us, it’s a good time for us to remember that these disciples no longer carry on Jesus’ ministry in the world. They’re gone now. But like the Dread Pirate Roberts, they found proteges and trained them up, who then found other proteges and trained them up, who continued the process right on up to us here today.
We are now invited to be the inheritors of the Holy name: the divine essence and personality of God. And if we accept the invitation, it means we will no longer quite fit into the world and its values; we might be unpopular; we might even be hated.
It means we will need to change and become a force for change in the world, willing to sacrifice, willing to lay down our lives if need be.
But more likely it means we will have to persevere in the day to day struggle to love others even when they don’t deserve it, and even when we don’t feel like it.
It means we have to respect the dignity of others even when we don’t receive respect from them.
It means we will continue to speak the truth, even to those who don’t want to hear it.
That’s what it means to take on the Holy name of God as part of our own name; to make the divine essence and the divine personality part of our own essence and our own personality.
And frankly it sounds dreary and difficult. But Jesus says it is a path to joy. “These things I speak ... that they can have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
Our invitation to accept the name of God means we can have the joy of our Savior, the joy of the King of kings and Lord of lords, in our own lives.
The joy comes from becoming something larger than ourselves – a new, loving family.
It happens in baptism; we get adopted as children of God.
Baptism is all about names; that’s why some folks call the baptism service a “Christening.”
And the name of God becomes part of our name because it becomes our new family name. We are like common peasants suddenly adopted into the royal family, with the royal blood pulsing in our own bodies.
The divine love that unifies the Persons of the Trinity reaches out to include us, as parents love their own children.
That’s what it means to be included in the name of God through our baptism. We enjoy the essence of God, which is the essence of pure love.
And that’s why we should join in Jesus’ prayer: “Holy Father, keep us in thy holy name, that we may be one with you, even as you are one with your only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.”