There is an old black gospel song from the American South, most often sung to the driving beat of a blues guitar, which includes the following lyrics:
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my father's name,And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my mother's name,And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my sister's name,And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.1
In the song, the "man going around taking names" is a metaphor, of course, for all that menaces human relationships and life -- most prominently, the slave trader and, finally, death itself. And it is a fascinating image for potential evil, this idea of "taking names." Even school children can identify with it. "Now, children," warns the teacher. "I'm going to the office for a few minutes, and I'm appointing Frances to be the monitor. Don't misbehave or she will write down your name, and you'll have to deal with me when I get back." ... There's somebody around here taking names.
When John the Baptist was at work in Bethany, beyond the Jordan River, a delegation of religious officials showed up from Jerusalem. They were not there, by the way, on a package tour of the Holy Land; they were there taking names. You could tell that from the very first words to come from their mouths. "Who are you?" they said. No small talk. No pictures of grandchildren passed around. Just, "Who are you?" ... There are some people going around taking names.
There is a difference, of course, between name-seeking and name-taking. Name-seeking is usually gentle, an innocent desire to know another person. The sales rep you have just met at the convention leans over to squint at your "Hello! I'm ____________" badge. The woman who has just moved into the apartment next door meets you at the mail box, extends her hand saying, "I'm Jane Morris in 4-B," and arches an eyebrow expectantly, hoping for your name in return. This is name-seeking.
Name-taking, however, does not want to know another person; it wants to put the other person on trial. "Let me see your license," says the motorcycle cop, and we respond, "Yes, officer, have I done something wrong?" We sense we are already on trial. "I'm sorry," says the clerk, "I can't take your check without proper I.D." And so we pull out the credit cards and the photo identification as if to say, "See, these will testify in the court of respectability to my good character."
Name-taking places a person on trial, puts a person under threat of judgment, and, naturally, makes us wary. Bill collectors roaming through poor, but tightly-knit, neighborhoods often discover that folks somehow cannot recall their neighbors' names, even though they have lived next door to them for thirty years. Or again, I was once the relatively innocent victim of a traffic mishap. A young man, deciding at the last minute to turn into a service station, steered too sharply and creased the fender of my car. Half a dozen people watched the accident happen, but when I approached each of them, seeking an independent witness, they were suddenly struck by a strange combination of blindness and amnesia. They had seen nothing, could not even call up the memory of their own names. Name-taking puts a person on trial, drags them unwillingly into court ... There's a man going around taking names.
"Who are you?" said the officials from Jerusalem, taking names, and quickly John moved from being a minister at work to being a man under a threat. In fact, John was now on trial. The emissaries from Jerusalem had come as judge, jury, and prosecution to put John's ministry to the test, and John was being called to the stand as the only witness for his own defense. The People of Jerusalem versus John the Baptist. Will the witness please state his name? Who are you? ... There's a man around here taking names.
But it is right at this point in the story that something very strange happens. The closest parallel to it I know about occurred in one of Woody Allen's antic movies. The scene in the movie is a courtroom, and a trial is underway. A somber judge is presiding; the jury is listening intently; the prosecuting attorney is laying out the case. Suddenly the rear doors of the courtroom swing open and a frantic, emotionally-distressed man enters. He looks wildly around, and then blurts out a tearful confession, admitting to the astonished court that he, and not the defendant, is the guilty party. A dramatic and startled silence fills the room. The only problem is that the crime to which he has confessed has nothing to do with the case being tried in that court. Slowly a puzzled look gathers on the guilty man's face. Looking anxiously at the judge, he names a particular case and asks if this is the correct court, "Next courtroom," responds the judge, pointing to the exit, and the man bolts out the door.
Just so, as soon as John had been placed under interrogation, he blurted out a confession, but, strangely enough, it was a confession which belonged in another courtroom, was pertinent to another trial: "He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, 'I am not the Christ' " (John 1:20). The authorities had come for an affidavit about John: John provides a testimony about the Christ. There are two trials going on here. The officials are conducting one, but John insists upon being a witness in the other. They attempt to put John to the test, but, ironically, his testimony turns the tables and places them on trial. Indeed, if we listen to the court record, we can ear the overlap of the two proceedings, feel the mounting frustration of the prosecutors as their key witness gives his deposition in a case they did not even know was being tried:
Prosecution: What, then? Are you Elijah?
John: I am not.
Prosecution: Are you the prophet?
John: No.
Prosecution: Who are you, then? Tell us about yourself. Answer the court.
John: I can speak about myself only by speaking of someone else. I cry in the wilderness, announcing the coming of another.
[The prosecution asks for a brief recess to confer. The interrogation then resumes.]
Prosecution: That is confusing. Why, then, are you baptizing?
John: I baptize with water, but there is one standing in this court at this very moment, and you do not know him. I am not worthy to untie his sandals.
Back and forth it went, the questions and the answers, the authorities conducting one trial, John giving his witness in another, until finally we are left to wonder which trial is real. Is John the defendant, or the officials? Is John on trial, or is it the world? The earliest Christians must have heard this story of John's interrogation with great enthusiasm, and perhaps even a measure of joyous laughter. They heard it as a story about the day they put old John the Baptist on trial, and he stood up and gave his witness to Jesus in a greater courtroom, one in which his accusers had no power. They also remembered the day they tried to take Jesus' name, the day they brought Jesus himself into court, and how he, too, turned the tables and put the accuser on the stand:
"Are you the King of the Jews?" said Pilate.
"Do you say this ...?" responded Jesus, turning his accuser into the defendant.
"Me? Am I a Jew? ... What have you done?"
"I bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice."
"What is the truth?" asked Pilate, convicting himself.
In his provocative book Liturgies and Trials, Richard K. Fenn has commented that "the question of whether it is God or Caesar who is on trial is at the heart of the biblical tradition ... ."2 Christians are persuaded that it is the world which is finally on trial, and they give their testimony accordingly. Placing their trust in the Christ who "will come to judge the quick and the dead," the Christian community has been bold to face all worldly accusers, whether they come from Rome with swords, from Birmingham with police dogs, from Warsaw with a rifle, from Hollywood with a sneer, or from Washington with a court order. As the folk hymn puts it, "All my trials, Lord, soon be over." Fenn has also observed that contemporary life is a constant experience of being placed in the box and put on trial. Students in school must produce their papers, grades, and SAT scores "for the record." In a career, one is always having to demonstrate competence and justify actions. A stockholders' meeting places the achievements of the corporate officers on trial. Single people and divorced people are often accused in the court of gossip of being unable to maintain long-term relationships. Parents enroll in "effectiveness training" seminars, lest they be found guilty of inadequate methods of raising their children. And now that dozens of paperback books have mapped the dark regions of the unconscious, there is opened up, according to Fenn, "a source of accusations or of offensive motives that turns a lifetime into a perpetual trial with fresh evidence continually arising from buried sources."3 ... There's always somebody going around taking names.
We are under constant trial, and it is no wonder, then, that one of the ways Christians have always understood the good news of what has happened in Jesus Christ is in terms of already being acquitted in the highest court of all. The apostle Paul once asked, "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? ... Who is to condemn?" The answer: No one, because the Judge himself was the very one who died for us, was raised from the dead, and even now prays for us (Romans 8:34).
The world places us on trial every day, but what the world does not know is that we have already been tried in a greater court and, through the mercy of Christ, we have been found "not guilty." Like John, the Christian community knows that there are two trials going on. The accusations and condemnations of the world are painful, but they finally have no lasting power, because our case has been pled before another judge in whom there is no condemnation. "There stands among you," said John to his accusers, "one whom you do not know," and when, the next day, John saw Jesus himself, he continued his testimony in the trial which really matters, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" The accusers of the world try to take our names, but in Jesus Christ we have been given a new name, and the world cannot ever take it.
There stands a tree in paradise, and the pilgrims call it "The Tree of Life"; All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
In the television series Roots there is a scene in which the slave traders are trying to break the spirit of the young black man named Kunta Kinte, whom they have captured and brought to America from his African homeland. They have tied him to a tree, and with whips they are attempting to beat into him a new and submissive identity, "Your name is Toby," they say. The young man resists, and the whips fall. "Your name is Toby." More resistance, and the whips fall again and again. Finally the punishment is too severe, and the young man hangs his head in defeat and speaks his slave name, "Toby."
I once heard a black minister speak of his own enraged reaction when he saw that episode. He admitted that, for a moment, he was consumed with hatred, not only for those who were beating Kunta Kinte, but for all white people, for all who, through the whip of racism, bring humiliation and shame to others. The only thing that kept this hatred from settling into his heart, he said, was the deep awareness of his faith in another man, a man who was also tied to a tree and beaten. "They took this man's life," he said, "but they never took his name. And one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that name. Jesus is Lord."
1. "There's a Man Going Around Taking Names," from Religious Music: Solo and Performance (Album number in The Library of Congress "Folk Music in America" series, 1978). Words in the public domain.
2. Richard K. Fenn, Liturgies and Trials: The Secularization of Religious Language (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1982), p. 49.
3. Ibid., p. 27.