What’s Your Name Today?
Dear Sutton and Savannah,
As I’m guessing you have experienced with your own children, picking a name for a newborn can be a daunting task. I love your names. But, I know that life’s experiences sometimes impose different names, or at least different identities, on you. The current political and social landscape seems to have glorified name-calling in its worst forms. It is hurtful, degrading and dehumanizing to both the victim and the perpetrator. Part of inner work is to discard the inner graffiti written by those who overflow with toxic waste, and give voice to the true you that is bursting with divine power and grace and radiance and love. I hope you let the magnificent, authentic you define your identity today.
-Dad
Inside Out Lectionary Letters
Year A - 2nd Sunday after Epiphany (Texts, Art, Hymns)
Readings for January 18, 2026
Isaiah 49:1-7 / Psalm 40:1-11 / I Corinthians 1:1-9 / John 1:29-42
This week we move from the Gospel of Matthew to the Gospel of John in order to pick up an additional story of the connection between the cousins John (the Baptist) and Jesus. In this passage John publicly identifies Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” testifying that he has seen the Spirit descend upon him and declaring Jesus to be God’s chosen one. Two of John’s disciples hear this testimony and follow Jesus, and they spend the rest of the day with him. One of them, Andrew, then brings his brother Simon to Jesus, who looks at him and gives him a new name—Cephas (Peter). The passage provides us with insight into the early days of Jesus’s teaching ministry, and the beginning of transformation in the lives of the disciples.
Scripture as a Mirror of the Soul
There are some curious statements made in this passage. (Those I find curious may be different than what you find curious. Follow your own curiosity and see where it leads.)
In verses 31 and 33 John (the Baptist) says that he doesn’t know Jesus. These two are cousins and their mothers apparently had a good relationship (Luke 1:39). It seems odd that he wouldn’t know him.
In verse 39 it seems odd that we are told the time of day, but not the content of the conversation. Is the time of day important? Symbolic?
Why is Peter the only disciple given a new name?
In Matthew’s story of the baptism of Jesus, John seems to recognize Jesus when he approaches John to be baptized (Matthew 3:14). Or maybe he didn’t recognize him at first. However, if we look toward the inner journey revealed in this passage, the phrase makes sense. “I myself did not know him”; my ego does not know the path to life and enlightenment. Rather it is being attune to the divine voice within that enables one to recognize the truth and beauty that is right in front of us. John can represent for us the external and internal guides that provide insight, language and orientation toward something that is real, but not yet personally known.
This movement toward an inner new life begins with a subtle shift. These new disciples apparently do not receive a sermon from Jesus. They receive a question: “What are you looking for?” This is where the journey turns inward. What began as outward projection—someone else telling me what matters—becomes an interior inquiry—what do I actually want? The invitation, “Come and see,” is not a demand for belief but a request for presence. And then comes the quietest, most important line in the passage: “They stayed with him.” Transformation in John’s Gospel begins not with dramatic conversion, but with lingering in the inner space of both self-reflection and divine awareness..
The text gives us both a moment and a process. There is a specific hour—four in the afternoon—when something begins. And yet, nothing is rushed. They stay. Time passes. Identity is not downloaded; it is formed slowly through proximity. This mirrors the inner journey, where insight may arrive in flashes, but integration unfolds over long, unremarkable stretches of staying with questions, relationships, and truth.
From this vantage point, we might consider that Jesus does not tell Peter who he must become; he names what is already present. “You are Simon… you will be called Cephas.” The renaming is not an imposition but a recognition. The name does not create Peter’s future; it reveals a deep pattern already forming within him.
This matters inwardly. There are names (or identities) placed on us by fear, by family systems, by religion, by culture—names that constrict rather than call. But there are also names that arise from being truly seen. In the inner journey, transformation is less about acquiring something new and more about having what is already within us spoken aloud at the right time, by the right voice.