Her name is Melody Pond.
She was kidnapped as a child and brainwashed to believe she was created for the sole purpose of murdering a man she has never met, a man known only as the doctor.
In this latest episode of Doctor Who, she finally meets him in the flesh, relishing her chance to fulfill her life’s purpose. She is a self-proclaimed psychopath. Her dance with the doctor as she tries to kill him is a perverse flirtation. Her method of murder –poison lipstick.
She kills him with a kiss.
For a moment, she is the happiest she has ever been. But something is wrong. The doctor is dying slowly and he is ruining her moment by continually calling out to another woman, River Song, a woman whom he clearly loves.
Who is this River Song? Melody demands to know.
But the doctor won’t tell her. Instead he whispers a message to her that only she can hear, a message he wants her to deliver to River when she meets her.
Who is this woman? Melody asks the doctor’s companions.
And so they show her.
She is River Song.
Melody Pond is River Song. And due to his time traveling capabilities, the doctor has known her virtually her whole life. He knew her as a baby. He will one day be there when she dies. He knows that she was a murderer and he knows that one day she will be a hero.
Struck by the doctor’s faith in her, a confused Melody manages to take that one huge step in becoming River Song. Using the last of her regenerative powers (this is science fiction remember) she heals the doctor and brings him back from the dead.
It is the power of a name.
Jesus knew the power of a name. In the gospels, he calls people by name. He even gives them new names. He knows everything about everyone. He knows who they were. He knows who they will be. He knows who they are. And they are all things at once to him.
When Jesus first meets Peter, Peter’s name is Simon and he is a fisherman. What do you think Jesus saw when he first looked at Peter? Did he see the fisherman? Did he see his rock? Did he see the man who would deny knowing him three times? Did he see the man who would one day be known as the first pope?
Or did he see all of these things at once?
Can you imagine, for a second, what that must feel like, if you’re Peter, or if you’re Melody Pond? You’re leading your ordinary run of the mill life. You think you know all that you ever need to know about anything. You know exactly how your life will go. And then someone looks at you and that someone knows who you are and the wonderful things you will do one day.
Could you meet that stare?
Could you hold that gaze?
And then, as if the stare weren’t enough, that person changes your name forever and sets you on your journey.
I’ve had brief flashes of that kind of thing several times in my life.
No name changes, but moments when someone has said my name, like Sister Julie at communion when I was little, and I have felt that in that second, that person knew everything there was to ever know about me. They could see my future—and it was something beautiful.
Look for those moments. Let God name you.
It is a powerful thing.
