The Name Jar, by Yangsook Choi:
Story synopsis: 
Being the new kid in school is hard enough, but what about when nobody can pronounce your name? Having just moved from Korea, Unhei is anxious that American kids will like her. So instead of introducing herself on the first day of school, she tells the class that she will choose a name by the following week. Her new classmates are fascinated by this no-name girl and decide to help out by filling a glass jar with names for her to pick from. But while Unhei practices being a Suzy, Laura, or Amanda, one of her classmates comes to her neighborhood and discovers her real name and its special meaning. On the day of her name choosing, the name jar has mysteriously disappeared. Encouraged by her new friends, Unhei chooses her own Korean name and helps everyone learn to pronounce it.

I love a dining table set with place cards, written with your name and where to sit. One reason I love place cards at the dining table is that it feels fancy.  Place cards take away the confusion, allows one to sit without the awkwardness, and allows for your name to be known and claimed.  

Our names don't just do the job of signaling things about ourselves to other people; our names can also be a vital expression of your own individual identity, representing a connection to our family, our culture, your language, our community and our religious practice.    Some people claim a given birth names and some claim a chosen name. 

Chosen names are more common than ever in our society today and need to be recognized.  It is especially important to those within the gender expansive and transgender community.   Honoring someone's chosen name and pronouns is a practice.   The following are some definitions, intentional language, and a practice: 

Dead name: the birth name of a transgender person who has changed their name as part of their gender transition. 

Deadnaming: is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name (including pronouns) that they used before transitioning, such as their given birth name. Done intentionally,  deadnaming is a way to invalidate or mock someone's gender identity and expression. Schools are just beginning to identify deadnaming as a form of harassment.   

Often though, deadnaming it’s unintentional.  Tip: when someone corrects you with their chosen name say,  ‘thank you’ not ‘I’m’ sorry', then try again using the chosen name.

Names are important. We all have a name.  Imagine if a dining table had place cards with just the labels that are given to people. A place card for immigrant, or outsider, or homeless, or youth or uncircumcised, or someone’s dead name.

Learning, knowing, understanding and calling someone by their name, including cultural names that are hard to pronounce (such as in Unhei's story,) and using chosen names not dead names, are what demolishes barriers between us and creates an expansive table to make room for diverse backgrounds, cultures, the sharing of meaningful foods, vulnerable stories, laughter, and ultimately intimate and trusting connections.    

Unhei (Yoon-Hey)  Unhei learns the significance of her name from her mother and the friendly Korean grocer in her neighborhood. Her name, which means “graceful” in Korean, was chosen for her by a name master sought out by her mother and grandmother.   And 'Chingu'...in Korean means friend. 

The Name Jar, author and illustrator, Yangsook Choi, Dragonfly Books, 2003 

One of the most nerve-wracking and anxiety-inducing places is for sure, the Jr. High School cafeteria. Most of us remember what it was like in the school lunchroom. After you get your lunch you scan the room for a table where you will feel welcome and accepted.  Often the same table where your friends wave to you.  But when your besties aren't there, it becomes a room full of uncertainty.  When sitting alone somehow feels better than not fitting in.  Fitting in is a fear of not being accepted. 

Springtide Research Institute recently compiled a report about Gen Alpha and their faith:  Thirteen, A First Look at Gen Alpha.  What do 8th graders, 13-year-olds, Gen Alpha, know about the differences between fitting in and belonging?  Here are some answers from our youth at RBCC: 

• Belonging is about being somewhere you want to be, and they want you. 
• Fitting in is about being somewhere you want to be, and no one cares. 
• Belonging is being accepted for you. 
• Fitting in is being accepted for trying to be like everyone else. 
• If I get to be me, then I belong. 
• If I get to be like you, then I am only fitting in. 

Not belonging at school is heartbreakingly hard, but it is nothing compared to not feeling you belong in the place you call home.   To feel you don't belong in your own family.  What 8th graders say not belonging at home feels like: 

• Not living up to parents expectations for my life. 
• Not being as cool, or as popular, or as athletic or as smart as your parents want you to be. 
• Not being as good at the same things your parents were good at when they were young. 
• No being accepted for your true self and expression of self. 

The familiar story of the Prodigal Son, is a story of a family, and all is complications of acceptance and belonging.  I can imagine the prodigal son story taking place in a Jr. High school cafeteria.   To be willing to look up from our lunches and notice everyone entering the room.  Learning to recognize and understand differences, then accepting those differences, and then celebrating belonging together. 

Would you have been the one or are you going to be the one…to scooch over at the lunch table
(or regularly claimed and familiar church pew) for the stranger in the doorway, the outcast in the room, the unpopular one in the room, the one who has the unpopular opinions, the one you perceive as annoying or to blame?  Because based on the stories Jesus tells, he treats all those people like family!  All worthy of acceptance and celebration. 

 “His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”   Luke 15:32

​When Harry Potter is trying to find the platform for the train that will bring him to his new school, he faces a brick wall where Platform 9 3/4 should be. Mrs. Weasley, the mother of students who have made this trip before, gives him advice. She encourages him to run right toward the platform  promising that it will yield when he gets to it. 
Harry had to trust the message, that what was on the other side of that brick wall, was the promise of what he’d only been told was waiting for him.  
Running towards a brick wall required courage to leave behind the familiar.
Running towards a brick wall required hope for his own future.
Running towards a brick wall required imagination to try a new thing.
Running towards a brick wall required love shared with him.
Running towards a brick wall required trust that what was told to him was in fact true behind the wall. 
If it weren't for Mrs. Weasley's prophetic greeting and the assurance of hope, Harry may have never made it to Hogwarts.

Thresholds, physically, spiritually, and metaphorically, are places of crossing over, encounter and transition – between inside and outside, the known and unknown, here and there, and then and yet to come.   The front porch is the threshold that is at the edge of inside, the common ground of outsiders and insiders.  The front porch of a church serves as a prophetic greeting to the  community. 

Thresholds have moved further and further in our neighboring community.  No longer the sanctuary doors, not even the front doors of our church building...but to the sidewalk, the street, the top of the hill. But, the front doors of our church are most often the first threshold most people encounter.  The threshold of our own church home may feel comfortably familiar and surprisingly unfamiliar, recognizable and also unrecognizable to us upon return from the last time we spent time within.  The front doors of our church may also feel like a brick wall to someone courageously crossing our threshold for the first time. 

What can we do to make our threshold more permeable?  (bricks are technically porous after all)
What prophetic greeting are we proclaiming to our neighbors to give them a hopeful reason to step off the sidewalk?   What assurance of hope are we giving someone looking for the way into a safe, welcoming, and accepting space.   But even more importantly, does it match who we truly are beyond the threshold of our own church doors?  Are we are own worst brick wall or are we truly speaking a prophetic greeting to our neighbors that yields to their need for inclusion, acceptance, and support? 

Here are some of the Prophetic Greetings our NextGen group has brainstormed over time: 
Trans Youth Safe Here
They is a Beautiful Pronoun for God
Love is God’s Orientation
God is too Big for one Religion
Diversity Equity and Inclusion Practiced Here
​We Stand with our (Jewish, Muslim, AAPI, BIPOIC…) Siblings
People Exactly Like You are Welcome Here
We Welcome Your… (pronouns, expression of identity, doubts, opinions, perspectives, stories, etc.)
Church is a Practice, Unconditional Love and Justice is the point
​Kindness is a Verb

God who dwells with us, You command us to love out neighbors. We know You rejoice when we meet our neighbors where they are. We give thanks in advance for each and every stranger, neighbor, friend, and loved one, who has the courage to approach the threshold of our church home.  Remind us that all people, known and to be known, are made in Your image. Valued and Beloved. Guide us in being a reflection of Your extravagant welcome, inclusive acceptance, and radical love.  May we be, on the outside, who we believe ourselves to be on the inside.  Even in the midst of great change.  Amen.