Read Isaiah 43:1–7
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“’Mary!’ Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, ‘Rabboni!’ (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).” (John 20:16 NLT)
Mary Magdalene had likely heard many things said about her. Troubled. Unclean. Possessed. Crazy. That woman. The one with the demons. Scripture tells us that Jesus had freed her from seven demons, and even after her healing, people may still have defined her by what had once afflicted her. Communities are often slow to release someone from an old reputation. A person can be restored to life while others continue calling them by the name of their former suffering.
Then, outside the empty tomb, Mary hears one word:
“Mary!”
Jesus does not call her by her history, her affliction, or her social category. Jesus calls her by name.
That moment changes everything. The tomb is still there. Mary’s grief has been real. The violence that killed Jesus has not been erased. Yet when the risen Christ speaks her name, Mary recognizes that death has not ended the story. She is personally known by the One who calls life out of death.
Through the prophet Isaiah, God spoke with that same intimacy to a people whose circumstances had made them feel forgotten. They had experienced judgment, displacement, and uncertainty. Their life together had been wounded, and the future before them remained unclear. Yet God began not with their failures or their captivity, but with a reminder of who formed them:
“I have called you by name; you are mine.”
God’s knowledge of Israel was not merely informational. God did not simply know facts about the people. God created, formed, redeemed, named, accompanied, and gathered them. They were known through relationship. They belonged to God, not because they had successfully earned recognition, but because God’s faithfulness reached them even within exile.
Friends, God knows us by name and calls us into new life.
Being known by God does not mean that deep waters, raging rivers, or consuming fires will never come. Isaiah promises no such exemption. God’s people will pass through dangerous places. What God promises is presence: the waters will not overwhelm them, the rivers will not sweep them away, and the fire will not consume them.
Those forces may affect their lives, but they do not get to define their identities. Exile does not erase their belonging. Suffering does not cancel their worth. Captivity does not become their name.
When God says, “You are mine,” this is not the possessive claim of someone trying to control another person. Human beings often use belonging as an excuse to dominate: You are mine, so I decide who you must be. You belong here, so you must conform. We accepted you, so you owe us the version of yourself we prefer.
God’s claim moves in the opposite direction. God refuses to surrender a person’s identity to captivity, shame, danger, or the judgments of others. God’s naming restores belonging; it does not remove personhood.
The world often names people in order to control them. God calls people by name in order to restore them.
Our world is skilled at assigning labels. People are called respectable or embarrassing, normal or deviant, faithful or troublesome, useful or disposable. A person may be reduced to what happened to them, something they once did, a condition with which they live, the body they inhabit, the person they love, or the ways they fail to meet someone else’s expectations.
Institutions assign names too. Sometimes they decide who is welcome, who may speak, who possesses authority, and whose testimony can be trusted. They may insist that people hide pieces of themselves, perform an approved identity, or answer to labels that make everyone else more comfortable.
Even the Church can become more invested in naming people than in knowing them. We may attach a category to someone and imagine that we have understood the whole person. We may speak about people without listening to them. We may demand that they answer to identities formed by our fear, prejudice, theology, or need for control—and then call that demand faithfulness.
The unsettling question is unavoidable:
Does the Church help people hear God calling their names, or demand that they answer to names God never gave them?
Mary stands before the risen Christ carrying grief, confusion, and a history others may have used against her. Jesus does not reduce her to any of it. Jesus calls her, “Mary.”
In hearing her name, Mary recognizes Christ. She also receives a new beginning. Jesus does not merely comfort her and send her back into silence. Mary is called into witness. The woman whose society might have questioned or dismissed her testimony becomes the one entrusted to announce resurrection to the disciples. What’s more, Jesus then sends her, “that woman”, to be the first preacher of the Gospel!
Christ’s recognition does not wait for institutional permission.
That does not mean God’s call invents an entirely different person or removes everything that came before. Mary remained Mary. Her history remained part of her story. But neither her suffering nor the labels attached to it could contain what she was becoming. The risen Christ called the person who had always been there into a life that death, shame, and social judgment could not prevent.
God knows who we are, friends—even when the world does not.
God knows us beneath the labels others have imposed, beneath the roles we have learned to perform, and beneath the false selves we have constructed to remain acceptable. God does not call us away from the person God created. God calls us out of whatever has prevented that person from living fully.
A God beginning may start with hearing our name spoken beyond all the noise that tried to rename us. It may begin when we discover that God has never confused us with our wounds, our failures, or the categories others used to contain us. It may begin when we finally trust that being fully known by God does not erase us—it restores us.
The risen Christ still stands near places we have mistaken for endings. Christ still calls people whom the world has mislabeled, underestimated, or dismissed. Christ still speaks our names—not to control who we may become, but to call us into resurrection life.
Listen.
God knows your name.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
God knows us by name and calls us into new life.
PRAYER
God who creates, forms, and restores us, help us hear your voice beyond every label that has diminished or confined us. Teach us to recognize others as people you know by name, and give us courage to answer when you call us into new life. Amen.
Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).