In the tender tale of doomed lovers, Shakespeare tells the story of Romeo Montegue & Juliet Caplet, children of two warring families in Renaissance Verona. At the opening of act II, scene ii, Juliet declares that names are artificial tools to identify people and that it is not the name or the family “Montegue” that she loves but the person of Romeo. It is in this context that she speaks the familiar words,
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
In her adolescent way, Juliet surfaces the complext and deeply personal issue of identity. Her statement seems to ask, “Is the totality of Romeo summed up in the name Montegue or are there more substantial and meaningful qualities that identify him?”
Romeo’s response is equally impassioned and profound when he declares that he would “deny his father and refuse his name” and “be newly baptized” as Juliet’s lover. We may argue the adolescent immaturity of his rejection of his family, yet we cannot deny that Romeo has chosen what is better, to embrace love over name, future over past and children over parents.
So, what IS in a name? Is Juliet naive? Is she simple? Is it juvenile to believe that love (or any of many other values) is more important than a name? Shakespeare understood the dilemma. By virture of writing the story he is recognizing the injustice of disowning ones’ child because of a name. Yet, the two lovers die in the end. Is Shakespeare morbid? Is he a cynic? Perhaps he is redeeming what could have been little more than a sappy Hallmark Channel love story by letting the lovers suffer the realities of embracing love over name.
Not only could a name seperate child from parents in Renaissance Verona, names can seperate one disciple of Christ from another. Was Juliet less of a daughter to her Capulet parents if she married Romeo and became a Montegue? Is a Christian less of a brother or sister in Christ if the body with which that Christian worships does not identify itself by the title, “Church of Christ”? What IS in a name?
Is the substance of what binds us together nothing more than a name? If the answer is, in fact, “Yes”, then we can justify the abuse the lovers took from their families.
Yet, a name seems far too transient to warrent the death of Christ. In the apostle Pauls discourse in Ephesians 2:11-22 this idea of exlusion based on a name takes on a very real dimension,
“Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.”
Rather than Montegue or Capulet, Church of Christ or {something else}, the tension in ancient Ephesus was between the names, “circumcised” and “uncircumcised.” Paul identifies the tendency to embrace relationships with one’s in-group (as defined by a deeply-held religious practice and a corresponding name) and to reject relationships with one’s out-groups. Yet, in Christ “the dividing wall of hostility” has been eliminated. In Ephesians 2:14-22, Paul describes in multiple ways how those categories no longer work. Rejecting someone based on a name (uncircumcised, Montegue or something other than “Church of Christ”) demonstrates a thorough lack of understanding of what Christ did “through the cross” (2:16). No longer was it fitting for “the circumcised” to reject “the uncircumcised”. No longer was it fitting for the “Jew”ish Christian to reject the “Gentile” Christian.
So, again, what IS in a name? Looking down from the cross, Christ would say, “Nothing! The substance of what I died for cannot be encapsulated in a name, however good that name is! And, a name must never be used to un-do what I did on the cross!”
OW
