He Says My Name Like It Is Difficult

There is a version of this that leaves no evidence at all, and it is the version that involves a name.

Picture the man it happens to. His name has four syllables and it is not hard. Children manage it. The woman at the coffee shop manages it. His name is not difficult.

But his manager pauses before it. Every time. There is a small breath, and then a slightly careful pronunciation, and sometimes a little laugh afterward, as though something has been achieved.

And once every few weeks there is a shortened version instead. Not asked for. Just applied.

Nobody would ever call that mistreatment. If he described it, out loud, to anybody, it would sound like nothing. A pause. A laugh. A nickname. He can hear how it would sound, so he does not describe it.

But something is happening, and it is happening about eight times a week, and it has been happening for three years.

What is happening is this. Every time his name is handled that way, in front of other people, a small note is added to the room. The note says: this one is from somewhere else. And it is added by the person with the most authority in the building, which means nobody else has to add anything at all.

He does the same job as everybody in that room. He does it well. And he is the only one whose name arrives with a pause in front of it.

And after three years he has started to do something that costs him more than any of it. He has started introducing himself with the shortened version. He hands it over before anybody can take it, because that way at least he chose.

The shepherd calls them by name

There is a detail in John 10 that people read past constantly, and it is the whole reason this passage belongs here.

To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. (John 10:3, King James Version)

He calleth his own sheep by name.

Stop and notice that the detail is in there at all. Jesus is making a point about recognition and belonging, and He could have made it without that clause. Sheep hear his voice would have been enough for the argument.

But the naming is included, deliberately, in a passage about who belongs to whom.

You are called by name rather than by category, and John 10 puts the naming right in the middle of a passage about belonging (John 10:3), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific in a building where a name arrives with a pause in front of it.

And the naming there is not a formality. It is what distinguishes the shepherd from the stranger later in the same passage. The stranger's voice is the one they do not follow.

You have a way of telling one voice from another, and John 10:3 makes the naming the mark of the one who actually owns the flock, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man from mistaking a manager's voice for the one that decides what he is.

Written on the hands, and no respecter of persons

There is a line in Isaiah about being remembered that is more physical than most people expect.

Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me. (Isaiah 49:16)

Graven. Cut in. Not written in a book that could be closed, and not a name on a list somewhere. Carved into a hand, where a person looks a hundred times a day without meaning to.

That is a very deliberate image for someone whose name is being handled carelessly by somebody else.

You are carved somewhere permanent, and Isaiah 49 uses the word graven upon the palms rather than any softer word (Isaiah 49:16), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an ancient image of a carved hand mean something at a desk on a Tuesday afternoon.

And there is the sentence Peter said out loud when the whole question of where a person comes from was finally settled in the early church.

Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. (Acts 10:34)

No respecter of persons. He said it in the house of a foreigner, having been shown by God that the distinction he had carried his whole life was not one heaven had ever made.

You have never once been ranked by where you came from, and Acts 10 has that settled in plain words in a foreigner's house (Acts 10:34), and the Spirit of God is the one who had to change Peter's mind about it before he ever said it out loud.

What this is not

Let me be plain, because this can go wrong in several directions.

This is not telling anybody to correct him. It sounds like it should be simple. It is not. Correcting a manager's pronunciation in front of a room has a cost, and only the reader knows what that cost is in that building.

It is also not saying that the manager is necessarily doing it on purpose. Some do. Some genuinely do not. That question is unanswerable from the outside and it does not change the effect, which is what this article is dealing with.

And it is not telling anybody to stop using a shortened name if they like it. Plenty of people shorten their own names happily. The question is only whether it was chosen or surrendered.

And plainly: if this has begun to reach past work, if you have started to feel that you do not belong anywhere, if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you has started wanting it all to stop, that is bigger than a workplace. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. Getting help is not weakness.

You are not being handed a confrontation you cannot afford, and John 10 hands over a naming that does not require anybody at your workplace to cooperate (John 10:3), and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a name steady whether or not it is ever said correctly in that room.