August 22, 2021 Sermon

 

August 22, 2021   “What’s in a Name?”                Rev. Peter Hofstra

          In our memory verse today, Peter says, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”  The name, as you can probably guess, is Jesus, or as Peter puts it in context, the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  He then reminds them of who this is, someone that they knew and rejected.

          “The stone that was rejected by the builders, it has become the cornerstone.”  Jesus spoke these words in relation to himself.  Jesus is the cornerstone upon which the church is built.  That is what Peter means.  And he puts that before the Jewish leadership to remind them of what was done to Jesus by THEM.  He was rejected, killed on the cross.  But he returned, was resurrected, and his church goes forward.  This is the name they should know.

          Peter has the opportunity to give this testimony to the leadership because he and John have been arrested.  Read back through Acts 3 to get the backstory.  A man lame from birth, one who was carried each day to his ‘spot’ outside the temple to beg for a living, was miraculously healed by Peter and John as they passed by.  The power was not in the miracle itself but rather in the demonstration it provided of the power that Peter and John were claiming as the power of Jesus, not simply to heal, but for the resurrection of the dead, for the forgiveness of sins, for the gift of salvation through Jesus.

          Peter gives this testimony because he has been asked by the high priestly family, in the presence of the ‘rulers, elders, and scribes gathered in Jerusalem’ “By what name or power to you come and do this?”

          Peter is using a communication tool here that may not be so well known to us today.  But it is one that God has used extensively in the Bible.  It is the power of naming.  This has been used at times when God has renamed people for God’s own purposes, as when Abram became Abraham and his wife Sarai became Sarah.  There are progressions in the meanings.  Abram means “exalted father” but goes to Abraham, “father of many nations”-what God calls him to be.  Sarai meant “Princess” while Sarah meant “Princess of a clan”, the progression of Abraham and Sarah as parents of God’s people. 

          Jesus used this as well, changing the name of Cephas to “Peter”, Rock, as in ‘upon this rock I will build my church’.  Then, Jesus changed Saul’s name to Paul, from ‘asker of questions’ to ‘the humbled’.  Saul asked the questions as a persecutor of the church but was humbled to become Jesus’ apostle in the church.    

          If we really want to dig into this phenomenon, there are prophets called upon by God to give their children specific names that illustrate God’s message.  And all those multisyllabic titles of Old Testament names, they all have meanings of significance.  One example, Melchizedek.  He shows up during Abraham’s life, pops up as the king of Salem (which means Peace), the forerunner of Jerusalem.  Abraham honors him as a king in God’s service.  His name translates as “My King is Righteousness”-Melchi’s King is God, who is Righteousness. 

          Now, as with everything else, it is very possible to overplay the importance of the meaning of names in the Bible, unless we are following the Bible’s lead.  In reference to Jesus, “They shall call his name Emmanuel”.  Literally, that translates “God with us”, as decent a description of Jesus as any I have read.

          Or, in this case, ‘there is no other name given under heaven among mortals by which we must be saved.’  And that name is Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  So we will go from the end and work backward.  “Of Nazareth”, that is as close to a family name as we might find in the Bible.  They did not have “family” names as we know them.  You were part of a tribe, of a clan, of a community.  For example, Joseph ‘Of Arimathea’, he stepped forward to claim Jesus’ body after his death.  Or Mary Magdalene, Mary of Magdala.  Jesus of Nazareth, a real human, not a mythic figure or angelic being.  Of Nazareth, where the rest of Jesus’ people could still be found.  Jesus, a mortal among mortals. 

          Having said that, Nazareth does dovetail into other biblical terms like Nazarene, which do have specialty meanings.  That is another sermon.  In this case, Peter is establishing where Jesus is from.    

          So, that second name, Christ.  When Jesus’ name is used in vain, often times one gets the impression Jesus’ actual middle name is Harold or Hamish or something.  Ever heard the expression, usually spoken in anger or frustration, of “Jesus H. Christ”?  Given how we use family names, or surnames, today, Christ is often assumed to be Jesus’ family name, instead of ‘of Nazareth’.  I still remember a comedian playing with this, “Here is Jesus Christ, son of Mr. and Mrs. Christ”.  

          In Matthew 1, God promised Joseph that his wife Mary “will bear a son, and you will name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  The title “Christ” came later, when Jesus was grown, and it means, most simply, the Anointed One.  It is from the Greek term “Khristos”, with a K, which means to anoint, which translates the Hebrew term ‘the Messiah’, the anointed one.  So, Jesus Christ is not something to be spoken in anger, but it is Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Anointed One. 

          To be anointed was to be set aside by God for a special purpose.  David was anointed as King, the founding king of the people of Israel.  Aaron was anointed to be the high priest, the closest religious worker to God Almighty. Each was set aside to special service to God.  In fact, Jesus is identified as both King and High Priest in the Bible.  As Messiah, Jesus is set apart by God for a special purpose, in the role of a deliverer, of a bringer of God’s blessings in a final and complete manner.  Wouldn’t that punch up Jesus’ resume?  Instead of ‘Messiah’, he listed ‘bringer of God’s blessings in a final and complete manner’.

          I will agree, all this name stuff has the feeling of a Bible Trivia game.  And I claim this is how God makes the divine understandable to humanity, but how can we do this without a thorough grounding in Biblical Greek and Hebrew?  A shortcut is Google, I will confess that.  The deeper way is to get a Study bible, or one with piles and piles of foot notes.  This work has been done for us.  But be mindful that names become important when the Bible, when God, tells us they are, as when the phrase ‘in the name of’ pops.  That is the  signal that something deeper is be revealed.

          So, “Jesus”.  It is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew name “Joshua”.  So, before we translate anything, there is historic precedent to consider.  God called for God’s Son to be named for the champion of Israel who led God’s people through the conquest of the Promised Land.  It is a strong name, historically speaking.  Which lends weight to the strength of its translated meaning.  It means “God is deliverance” or “God is salvation”. 

Peter said, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”  The name given by God at his birth is “God is salvation”.  A man named “God is salvation”, that is the name given among mortals by which we must be saved.

Why the name?  If our presupposition of reading Scripture is that God is seeking to make the divine understandable to the human, our answer must be found there.  Do we accept the truth that God gave us the Bible for all generations to understand what God is up to?

If we tie it all together, “Of Nazareth”, ties Jesus to a place and time, makes Jesus one of us.  “Christ”, the anointed one, ties Jesus to the promise that God has made for the Messiah, the Special One, who will come among them, anointed as kings and high priests were anointed for God’s service.  And Jesus, in the Hebrew Joshua, ties Jesus to the warrior who led God’s people into the Promised Land, but speaks plainly in the translation “God is salvation”.  Yes, it is all just a name, but Peter is plain in his speech to the Jewish leadership that the truth, the power of Jesus, is in the name.

To literally answer the question of the high priests, Peter is telling them that they come in the name of the one called “God is Salvation”, the anointed, the Messiah, a man from the town of Bethlehem; Godly power, the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy, and just a guy, God, and heavenly being.  That is the name, that is the power.  That is the answer to a question to those leaders in the book of Acts and it is an answer for us to remember when we consider Jesus as our Savior. 

          Acts records that five thousand came to believe because of the actions and the words of Peter and John.  I look at the continued shrinkage and consolidation of our churches today and I wonder I that power.  But the truth of the matter is that the question the leadership posed, “In whose name do you do these things?”  That has not changed.  We still come in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

          But in looking at the name of Jesus, I will admit I did not realize the full breadth and scope of the power of God contained in that name.  I mean, I know Jesus as Lord and Savior and Friend.  I know him as the Second Person of the Trinity.  I know he died for us and rose again for us.  One of my favorite references to Jesus’ name is “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess…”  But reframe it when we include what “Jesus” means, “At the knowledge that God is salvation, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess…”  And this is not just an action of God, but the man, the Messiah, that has come to accomplish this salvation among us, this saving from our sins.

          We live in a world today where sin pushes our ‘potential’, where our ‘perfection’ as something that comes by our own hand.  Humans have figured out how to feed more of us, how to banish disease, how to live longer.  But we know the reality of it.  Pollution, global warming, the expense of our advances to the environment, the continued conflicts between people based on gender and skin color as we compete for resources, we, here, live better for now, but at the cost to our world.  This is the moment when we must realize that “God is salvation”, not we ourselves, that Jesus saves us.  That at his birth came the promise that he would save us from our sins, including the sins we have committed that are destroying the very world in which we live.

          We can understand that when we understand what God has said to us in the Bible.  Those are not just a bunch of long and unpronounceable names that we might hear used for characters on “Little House on the Prairie” or something.  God says what God means in the very names that God gives.  Divine knowledge is laid out in ways that we, mere mortals, can understand, and grasp, and believe, and find hope in this world and the world to come.      

          Which name first?  Jesus.  There is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.  Amen.