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Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter – May 4, 2008
A few years ago Dr. Erol ONel, a Boston urologist, was invited by the GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceutical Company to a downtown office to sit in a room for about 45 minutes and answer questions about a soon to be released prescription drug - at the time tentatively called Nuviva. When the interviewers asked him what associations the word Nuviva would evoke in his patients, he replied, “It sounds terrible… like a hand cream.”
The name Nuviva, along with several others, had been created a year earlier by a team at the Brand Institute, a corporation which has workedfor such clients as Frito Lay, Kodak and Starbucks. Prior to Dr. Onel’s questioning, a whole list of possible names for the new medication had been reviewed by the marketing team, kicked back to the creative people and then the finalists were submitted to a search of all the registered brand names in the world to check for trademark infringement; a process that typically takes more than a year.
All that survive the trademark search are sent on to marketing research, which explores not only doctor reactions to various names but also tests the possibility that the new drug could be mistaken for another existing drug. Researchers ask doctors to write down the drug name and instructions as if they were writing a real prescription for a patient. The doctors’ handwriting is then studied – with careful attention being paid to the sloppiest penmanship – all to make certain that a pharmacist will not mistake the prescribed medication for another.
All of these tests consume time and cost money. Drug companies can spend years and $500,000 on consultants just to generate a catchy name for their product. Not much compared with the millions they spend in clinical trials but still it is money they did not have to spend even five years ago, when direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs began to take off and led to huge profits. Now, as one expert put it, “Executives want (a name) that will entice billions of dollars in sales. Customers want a hint of what it does. And the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t want implied medical claims.” That’s something you have to be very careful about. For example, the original proposed name for Rogaine was Regain, as in you regain your hair. But the FDA vetoed that idea, saying that it promised too much.
The Food and Drug Administration gets the final say so; pharmaceutical companies submit two or three options and the FDA picks the one that will go on the packaging and flood the airways. Among the options reviewed by Dr. Onel, the FDA did not choose Nuviva, opting instead for Levitra; a better name, the good doctor thinks, for a product meant to compete with Viagra, one of the first medications to benefit from advertising directly to patients.
“They really hit the homerun on that name, Viagra,” said one branding company executive. “It’s got poetry.” Well, it must be abstract poetry because it never says exactly what it does; as I said, the FDA does not allow that. The same rules, however, do not apply overseas. (See me after services to find out what they call this medication in the Middle East!)
The name is clever, though. The prefix “vi” connotes vigor and vitality, while the whole word rhymes with Niagara, conjuring up images of the power of the famous falls. Now the name is so well known that the drug’s purpose is not even mentioned in the ads. Name recognition; that’s what it’s all about.
Created by committees, screened for copyright infringement, prohibited from making specific medical claims, prescription drug names are typically made up words. Those who study such things report that drug makers seem to have favorite letters, and they run the gamut from X to Z: Nexium, Celebrex, Xanax, Zyban, and, recently released on the market, Xyzal, designed to treat allergies. “Discover the X factor,” reads their tagline.
Experts say that some letters look better in print, make pleasing sounds, and are associated with innovation. X is one of those letters, linked in peoples’ minds with science fiction, high tech, automobiles and drugs. Think “X Files,” “Lexus,” and “Microsoft X Box.” Apparently, the letter X, along with Z, C and D indicate that a drug is powerful. Companies scramble to get these letters in their product names. In fact, names have been screened and approved years before the medication is released on the market. You have to wonder if sometimes diseases are created just to match cures with catchy, if somewhat goofy, names.
“The name is not supposed to mean anything,” said a spokeswoman for Bayer Pharmaceuticals. “It’s just supposed to be …recognizable.”
And that, once again, is what it’s all about. A name means nothing in itself; it’s just supposed to be so well known that when people hear it a desired connection is made; a problem is solved; a meaning is created. The “X factor” is discovered.
Those of you who have sweated through algebra are familiar with the letter X, a trigger of much math anxiety. Perhaps there is a medication coming soon for that! In algebraic problems, equations are solved to obtain the value of one or more “unknowns,” usually designated by the letter “x.” According to one scientist I read, this usage originated in the Greek word “xei,” a translation of the Arabic “shei,” meaning unknown thing or object. And since algebra has its roots in the flourishing Islamic Middle East of the 8th to 15th centuries – the word itself is actually Arabic – this seems a reasonable explanation.
So, when we discover the X factor, the unknown is revealed; sometimes it’s a number; sometimes it’s a name. Last week, Paul spoke of seeing an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god” and he told the Greeks assembled in Athens that “the God who made the world and everything in it…does not live in shrines made by human hands.” That solves some of the equation; today, Jesus solves a little more.
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world,” he says in what is known as “the high priestly prayer.” He has finished the work he was given to do – “the hour has come” - and now, as he prays for his frightened followers, he asks that God’s glory be revealed through him. “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.”
Indeed, making God’s name known to those whom the Father gave him is central to the mission with which Jesus was charged. Far from a random collection of appealing sounds, filled with powerful and suggestive letters, in the Jewish tradition of which Jesus was a part, the name – or, more correctly, the names of God all have meaning in themselves; they point our hearts to God’s true nature; they establish a holy connection in our minds; and in so doing they guide our hearts and minds towards spiritual health in an increasingly soul-sick world.
More than a form of address or a way of referring to something, a name, in our faith tradition, conveys the nature and essence – as well as the history and reputation - of who or what is being identified. Like individuals, businesses, such as pharmaceutical companies, are dependent on their good names; in fact, when a business is sold, often the name – if it is well established, with a good reputation - is included in the price along with the more tangible assets; all of which makes you wonder, as an aside, if the Macy’s people should have kept the Marshall Field’s name as the store’s previous owners, Dayton Hudson, did. People who grew up here knew and trusted that name; we knew what awaited us when we walked in the doors off State Street to do our Christmas shopping.
A good name is earned, not given. When Moses turns aside to see the burning bush and God tells him he has been appointed to deliver the Israelites from the Egyptians, Moses naturally asks, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
Moses is not asking God “What shall I call you?” He is asking “Who are you; what are you like; what have you done; what will you do?” When God first called out of the bush, he proclaimed, “I am the God of your father…” and now Moses wants to know more: “What is your name?”
In God’s reply, “I AM WHO I AM,” spelled out in capital letters in the text – also translated “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE” – we learn that God is eternal; that he has been from all time and will remain for all time. We learn he was with out ancestors and he will be with us. Indeed, as God continues to address Moses’ question we learn even more: “I declare that I will bring you up out of the misery of Egypt.” He has seen his peoples’ afflictions; he will deliver his people from bondage. “This is my name forever,” he says. Moses has an answer; he has solved his X factor.
Jesus, whose name means “he saves,” has delivered his people as well. As they sit and listen to his poignant prayer, the disciples, who form a well meaning but rather befuddled focus group, slowly realize that the nature of the unknown God has been revealed through the one who has given himself a variety of names. As in Exodus, Jesus, too, says “I am.” “I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the good shepherd; I am the way and the truth and the life.”
These are but a few of his names; there are more, many more. And as these names have been made known to us, now we need to make them known to those seeking solutions to their own X factors in a society which has come to believe that there is a pill for everything. A Maryland anesthesiologist tells the story of a woman who told her doctor she didn’t like the way her husband was handling the family finances. She wanted to start keeping the books herself but didn’t want to insult her husband. Her doctor suggested she try an antidepressant to make herself feel better. “Doctors are now medicating unhappiness,” one commentator says.
Calling on the name of Jesus is not the same as swallowing a pill; nowhere does he guarantee our happiness and, to stretch the image, there are indeed side effects to following in his way. Discipleship has its demands; there are costs to be paid and crosses to be borne if we are to call ourselves by the name of Christians.
Let’s make sure that when people hear that name, they don’t make a mistake about the kind of people we are; let’s make sure that they make the kind of association that speaks of our oneness with each other and with our loving Father. That is Jesus’ prayer; his prescription, if you will, for those of us wishing to carry on his good name.
To prescribe something is simply to write it down beforehand – pre-scribe. In a country in which 2.4 billion prescriptions were written in 2005 – 118 million of them for products with cool X and Z names – Paxil, Zoloft and so on – there is room in our lives for another name; a name that was present at creation; a name that delivers what it promises – a seat at the table and a place in the kingdom - a name not designed by a committee but given by God.
How powerful, how poetic, how sweet that name sounds.