November 2026

Pastor Message: 

The Sacred Act of Naming

My younger sister’s family went on quite a journey trying to name their second son. They wanted to give him a good name. I suggested a few, but they rejected every one of them. Lord, in your mercy! I began to wonder what extraordinary name they were looking for.

Finally, twenty-two days after his birth, they named him Yong-Ha (용하, 容河).

In Korean tradition, siblings sometimes share a syllable in their names to reflect their generational relationship. Yong-Ha shares the first syllable, Yong (容), with his older brother, Yong-Hee (용희). His name combines Yong, meaning face or appearance, and Ha (河), meaning river.

I told my sister, “You can see God’s river in Yong-Ha’s face. Sometimes, it is peace like a river. A river keeps flowing, so its water remains fresh. It changes its course, takes on different forms, and carries an abundance of life.”

Thinking about naming reminded me of the creation story in Genesis 2:19–20, where God brings the animals to the human being to see what he will call them. Naming becomes part of humanity’s encounter with the living world. It raises a question: What kind of relationship begins to take shape between the one who names and the one who is named?

The Korean poet Kim Chun-su captures the beauty of this encounter in his poem The Flower (꽃): “When I called you by name, you came to me and became a flower.” To be named can be an experience of recognition—a moment when someone who once seemed like an anonymous presence becomes someone meaningful to us.

There is something beautiful about calling someone by name. Perhaps you call your loved ones with tenderness. Perhaps my mother carried that same love when she gave me my name and called me by it.

And yet, naming can also become a way of placing someone in a cage.

A name can become a label that defines someone before we have truly come to know them. It can diminish a person, mark them as inferior, or reduce their whole existence to a single characteristic.

Korea’s colonial history offers a painful example. Under Japanese colonial rule, the 창씨개명 policy, introduced in 1940, pressured Koreans to adopt Japanese-style names as part of a broader campaign of assimilation. The effort to reshape Korean naming practices was also an effort to reshape identity and belonging. Across the world, colonial powers have similarly sought to control people by suppressing their names, languages, and cultural identities.

As an election approaches, we hear other kinds of naming. Words like criminal, traitor, and radical… can be used not simply to criticize particular actions or ideas, but to frame entire groups as threats and political opponents as enemies. Such labels can turn disagreement into betrayal and complex human beings into figures to fear or reject. Politicians can benefit from this language by mobilizing fear, strengthening group loyalty, and directing public anger toward a common target.

But the damage does not end with politics. A child repeatedly called stupid may grow up doubting their abilities. Someone constantly treated as unwelcome may begin to question whether they belong at all. The wounds can last far longer than the words themselves.

That is how deeply domination can reach. It extends beyond the body into the ways people remember who they are and understand themselves. Its power lies not only in controlling people, but also in shaping how they come to see themselves.

A name can become an expression of love or an instrument of domination. It can open a space for relationship or close that space. It can help someone flourish or confine them within an identity imposed upon them.

God calls us by name. How wonderful that is! In Isaiah 43:1, God speaks to a people in distress: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” God’s calling is a promise of relationship and belonging, not a license to diminish another person. God calls us into a relationship of love—a relationship spacious enough for us to grow, to change, and to become more fully who we are.

We, too, are called to practice this kind of naming. When we encounter one another, do we reduce people to what we already know about them, or do we leave room for who they might yet become? Do our words confine people to their past, their mistakes, or the labels others have given them? Or do we speak in ways that make room for growth, dignity, and possibility?

May our words reflect the God who calls us by name—not to limit who we can become, but to invite us into the ever-flowing river of love, where life continues to unfold in ways we cannot yet imagine.

With love,

Pastor Hyunwoong