More Than a Name

More Than a Name
Acts 2:14a, 22-32; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

We Presbyterian Christians have a tendency to keep our faith in our heads. That is, we often are intellectual about our faith, as opposed to being emotional. It is a tension that needs to be balanced. When we come to church, we leave neither our brains nor our hearts at the door. God calls us to be complete people, fully using all the gifts, talents, and capabilities of our being.

A second tendency that we Presbyterian Christians have is to keep our faith private, to ourselves. It is enough that people see us coming to church. Beyond that faith is personal, private, protected, secluded, guarded. We are uncomfortable with the cocktail party approach to faith where someone comes up to us and starts talking about their faith. We don’t do that, and don’t really want someone else to do it to us.

Christian spirituality comes in a wide variety of styles, from the faith that erupts like a volcano to the faith that glows gently within a person. In between are many kinds of faith experiences that are shared more or less publicly.

Our Quaker sisters and brothers have other traditions besides the one of sitting in silence to wait for a word prompted by the Spirit. One of those is a shared accountability for each other’s faith. Several Friends will sit with another who is trying to discern a personal call or to work through an issue of faith. There are several questions which they employ to prompt reflection and prayer. One of those questions is, “When did God become more than a name to you?”

For most of us that isn’t as easy a question as it sounds. Growing up we perhaps heard God’s name in the context of Christmas and Easter, in mealtime or bedtime prayers, in the Pledge of Allegiance. Or perhaps we heard it abused and taken in vain. All that is still pretty head oriented. The question begs, appropriately, “When did the name of God become personal?” When did it become more than a vocabulary word, more than “dog” spelled backwards?

That personal side of the question is even more pointed if we change it to, “When did Jesus become more than a name to you?” In the afterglow of Easter, the question has no intention of going away. We can say with our heads, “Jesus is the Word become flesh.” We can say that intellectually, but the import of the statement is personal, relational. It has to do with flesh and blood and shared communal space, not with symbolic characters printed on paper or pixilated on LCD screens. If the Word became flesh, then there are eyes looking into our eyes, fingers seeking to hold our hands, lips ready to speak peace to our tempest-tossed souls.

When did Jesus become more than a name to you? When did the phrase, “Christ is risen,” become more than a song lyric?

Whether by gradual understanding or by lightning bolt experience somewhere along your spiritual journey your spirit arrived at the realization that “Jesus” was more than the name of someone who lived two thousand years ago.

Indeed, God and Jesus are more than names. Moses pressed God for a name, much as we might be asked for identification at the airport or bank. God was hesitant to give out a name. God didn’t want to be condensed into a small word. God cannot be defined by a few random vowels and consonants. And if God could be so defined, the languages of humanity would even more confuse the issue. Who is God? Elohim, Jehovah, Yahweh, Dieu, Gott, Dios, Deus, God.

And God did not want to use a given name, as all the people who followed pantheons of gods knew their gods by names that often described their function or idiosyncracies. God was bigger than that. God could not be contained by symbols and sounds. At some point God becomes more than all that. God in community, holy in one, becomes personal. God who creates becomes personal, the Spirit who empowers becomes personal, the risen Jesus who saves becomes personal.

The excerpt from Peter’s Pentecost sermon pushes the question. The promised Spirit has arrived in full-force in the midst of the Pentecost Festival. People from the Jewish diaspora have made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They may have had no knowledge of the events which led up to Jesus’ execution and what happened at the garden tomb on the third day. Or they may have heard the stories of Jesus’ death and resurrection and found them unbelievable. To them, Jesus was just a name.

But to Peter, to the ten other original disciples, to Mathias, to Nicodemus, to Simon, to a Samaritan woman at Sychar, to a man born blind who gained his sight, to Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus, to Mary Magdalene and her friends, Jesus was more than a name. They were witnesses.

“All of you listen up!” Peter says. “This Jesus, whom you crucified, is more than just a name. He is more than a prophet and a good man. He is the Messiah, the Holy One proclaimed by David and our other prophets. This is the Savior for whom we have been waiting for generations. Every single one of you is a witness to this truth. Whether you saw Jesus with your own eyes or are now hearing the good news for the very first time, you are a witness to what I am telling you today.”(1)

Peter invites them to know Jesus as more than a name. The phrase that Paul and the early Gentile Church later on used is “God ... gave him a name above all names” (Philippians 2:9). Peter says, “Let Jesus be more than a name. Let Christ be your Savior. Hear with your heart as well as your ears. Then you can proclaim Jesus as Lord and know the joy of Christ’s amazing saving grace.”(2)

It is hard for us to imagine the passion and power of Peter’s Spirit-filled preaching. We have heard it again and again. Yada, yada, yada. But what was it like the first time you heard it? What was it like the first time you heard it with more than your ears, your brain, your intellect? We have no idea how large the crowd was to whom Peter was speaking. All we know is that God brought about 3,000 people into the community that day.

Imagine all of Waverly crowded into the high school football stadium – on the field as well as in the bleachers. Peter tells the Good News of Christ, the truth of his death and resurrection, and 3,000 people – over half the crowd – are convicted with the belief that Jesus is more than a name. Their hearts were pierced, their souls cut to the quick. Regardless of language and culture, these people got the message – Jesus isn’t just a passing news item. He is more than his name. He is Lord and Savior.

Easter is not a one shot deal. Easter is more than one day. Easter is a movement, indeed, a revolution that frees the soul from the oppression of sin and the oblivion that it causes which palls over human life. Easter broke forth in the lives of people who returned to their homelands where they shared it with family and friends, creating little incubators of faith just waiting for Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy and other first generation apostles. There was no earthly way Jesus was going to be put back into the tomb. The resurrection was becoming epidemic.

Is Jesus more than a name to you? Is your Easter faith filled with such an awe that you see the world differently? There are yellow flowers popping up in lawn outside. Tomorrow they will be white puff balls. The world sees them as weeds, but a child sees them as clusters of fairies that we can send dancing on a breeze with a quick puff of air. Is Jesus just a name, like so many other names spoken by newscasters and written about by journalists? Or is Jesus the Savior who has changed your world, your life, your whole being? Every time we hear the Good News of Jesus Christ, it is Pentecost all over again. Are your hearts burning within you?

The question is not simply, “When did Jesus become more than a name to you?” but rather, “How is Jesus more than a name to you right now, in this moment, today, at this time in your life?”

(1) Kathleen Long Bostrom, “Acts 2:141, 22-32: Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) Year A, volume 2, p. 378.
(2) Ibid.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.