“What’s In A Name?”

1 John 3:16-24

Well, happy Mother’s Day!

Seeing all the carnations out in the sanctuary today – each one representing someone’s mother, or a mother herself – makes us realize how pervasive is the presence of our mothers, even when they are at a distance – even when they’ve gone on to be with the Lord. Motherhood is a kind of transcendent thing, and the influence of our moms is always with us – for better or worse!

Joan Rivers laughs about her mother’s ability to prick her conscience and make her feel guilty. “My mother could make anybody feel guilty,” she quips. “She used to get letters of apology from people she didn’t even know!”

Some of us have mothers like that!

Erma Bombeck once marveled at the fact that her mother would remake the beds even after the children had made them simply because there was a little wrinkle in the bedspread. Bombeck said that no one in the history of the world has ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed, but her mother wouldn’t allow it.

That’s what you call love!

Some of us have been so shaped by our moms that, before we can even look at the What Would Jesus Do? bracelet on our wrist, we have to resolve the What Would Mama Do? chain around our hearts. That’s why some of us even today never leave the house without making sure we have on a pair of clean underwear just in case we get into an accident and have to go to the hospital.

Mothers.

Some of our moms, of course, were sort of overwhelmed by the frailties of life, and were unable to bring the best gifts into our lives. Every Mother’s Day, there are some in the congregation who don’t have good memories of their mom. And we mourn that loss with you. But we focus today on the high ideals of motherhood because, regardless of our own experiences, the incredible human potential for love is often found in the stories of mothers.

This same kind of love is what the writer of the little letter of First John is trying to get across to us. You see, in life you can achieve great theological wisdom, succeed in business, accomplish great things, and attain a high degree of personal integrity, but it’s not until you learn to love that you start living! And its not until you learn to love in a distinctively Christian way that you truly begin to follow Jesus.

First John tells us that love is the ultimate test of our faith. It is the only way to measure the true state of your relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

So let me ask you today: how are you scoring on the love test?

Now, the Bible is not just talking about some amorphous feeling of love. And when we talk about Christian love, we are not talking about permissiveness, cheap grace, abdication of personal responsibility, or enabling others to remain in destructive behaviors.

One of the things that we need to remember when we talk about love is that – even when we celebrate the love of Mother’s Day – we should be sobered by the fact that the best moms not only know how to embrace us, but also how to enforce the law!

As Paul Revere’s mother is reported to have said, “I don’t care WHAT great thing you think you need to do…you’d better be HOME BY MIDNIGHT, BUSTER!”

No, love is not some loosy-goosy permissiveness, or some warm feeling in your heart..

What IS Christian love? Well, listen to First John:

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we KNOW that we belong to the truth….”

The standard of the Christian love test, according to First John, is Jesus’ sacrifice for us. Christian love is sacrificial, merciful, redemptive action taken in behalf of others!

And then First John takes us even deeper into what the commandment means:

“And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another…”

I hope you’ll notice that these are not two separate commands. We are not asked to believe in the name of Jesus, and then apart from that to love one another. No, these two elements go together. Believe in the name of Jesus…and love one another accordingly!

You see, how Christians love is to be connected to what we believe about Jesus! And what we believe about Jesus, will shape how we love!

So First John tells us that Christian love is a love that believes in the NAME of Jesus Christ.

What’s in a name? Why doesn’t the Bible just say, “Believe in Jesus?” Why does it say instead, “Believe in the NAME of Jesus?” Over and over and over again, the New Testament tells us to believe in the NAME of Jesus. What’s in a name?

And what IS Jesus’ name after all?

Well, all my Swedish relatives, whose last names tell whose sons they are – like Johnson (meaning the son of John), and Peterson (the son of Peter), and Swenson (the son of Sven) – take comfort in the fact that Jesus’ last name would probably have been…Josephson! Think about that! And they use that to make the claim that Jesus, therefore, must have been Swedish!

But, of course, Jesus was not Swedish. Jesus was Jewish – despite what my relatives say!

Other people think that Jesus’ last name was Christ! To look him up in the Nazareth phone book, you’d open to the C’s, find the Christ’s, and go…James…Janice…Jerry…JESUS! Jesus Christ –458-7777!

And do you know what? As silly as that seems, that’s actually pretty close to being the answer to the question, “What is Jesus’ NAME?” – the name we’re supposed to believe in and shape our love by!

The name First John is talking about is the title God gave Jesus. And that title is Christ, which means the anointed one. In Hebrew, the word…is MESSIAH!

When the Hebrew people were broken and battered by their enemies, when their lives were smashed to smithereens, when they were lost so deep in sin they couldn’t find their way out, when they encountered the reality of their own weakness and vulnerability to the law of sin and death, God made them a promise.

God would not abandon them. He would send them a Messiah to save them!

When the Messiah came, they would be set free, and their enemies defeated, and justice would come to their lives. When the Messiah came, the reign of God would be established, and the world would be made right! When the Messiah came, sins would be forgiven and the people would be reconciled to God. When the Messiah came the poor would be vindicated, the weak made strong, and the last would get to go first. When the Messiah came, God’s love would be firmly established in the world!

And our faith proclaims that the Messiah has come. Jesus is the long-awaited Christ!

And believing in his NAME…we are to go and love others accordingly!

One of our church members told me a short while ago about a powerfully redemptive moment in her life. As a child, she had been terribly abused. For the rest of her life, she carried around the deep bruises and injuries of that abuse. She lived in deep pain of body, mind and spirit. Abuse will do that to a person, you know. And there was immense anger, especially toward her father – the primary perpetrator.

And then one day, not too long ago, she experienced the grace of Jesus Christ. Even though she’d heard the words many times before, the promise that Jesus took upon himself all her sins and wounds and injuries became real to her as never before. This is one of the truly wonderful elements of the Gospel, you know. In some mysterious way that defies description, all of our sins, injuries, wounds and brokenness were transferred onto the shoulders of Christ. He took them upon Himself, so that they could be put to death, and we could be set free to start over again! And when this great truth came to our sister, she really experienced the power of the cross. She felt as if her painful past had been lifted from her shoulders, and taken up on the cross with Jesus.

And she was free!

A while later, she saw her dad. During their meeting, she somehow found some source of strength to be able to confront him with the truth. “Daddy, what you did to me was wrong. You have no idea of how it has hurt me over the years, and ruined my life.”

And then she found another kind of strength. She said to her father, “But today, I’m forgiving you for what you did to me. I can forgive you because I no longer have to judge you. Christ is in my life now, and He will judge you for me.”

There would never be a renewal of any kind of relationship between the two, of course. But this woman’s father tearfully thanked his daughter for forgiving him. And he left that day knowing that he was going to have to contend with God over all that he’d done.

This woman told me, “When I forgave him and let him go, it was like a giant weight was lifted from around me, and I could start life all over again!”

That’s what Christ does for people. He saves us from our enemies, and sets us free from our pasts. That woman’s father and all he had done to her no longer had power over her life. Christ had broken it. She was given a new sense of self-value and dignity, and strength to start living again. She was given the chance of a new beginning in Christ!

To believe in the NAME of Jesus is to believe that Jesus does that for people! He is our MESSIAH! It is to believe with all your heart that Christ has power to bring people from death to life, from sin to righteousness, from brokenness to wholeness, from sorrow to joy, from darkness to light. It is to believe that Jesus can find the lost, and lift the downtrodden, and provide new beginnings for people whose pasts are full of injury and destruction

And once you believe that, to live as a Christian is to go and represent that love to others.

You know, I’m going to bet there’s someone here in the sanctuary today whose life has gotten to the point where you feel like things will never turn around. No one else believes in you. Your friends, your family, maybe even you yourself have given up on you.

Well, I want you to know that this church has not given up on you, because Christ has not given up on you! And today, we declare to you in his NAME, that Christ believes in you, and that Christ has a plan for setting you free and transforming your life into joy! I hope you will let Christ take that burden from you today – whatever it is – and bring it to the cross where it can be put away, and you can get a fresh start!

And I suspect that most of us here today have someone in our lives – a family member, or neighbor, or even some group of people out in the community or world – who’ve been pretty much beaten up by life. Maybe they’ve brought it on themselves. Or maybe they’re the victims of outside circumstances. It really doesn’t matter.

What DOES matter is that they need SOMEONE to love them with the hope of Christ! They need someone willing to affirm their dignity in the middle of a world that strips it away. They need someone to be on their side, believing the best for them. They need someone to give them a hand up. They need someone to stick up for them, fight for them, advocate for them, and stand with them in the face of life’s storms.

Will it be you? Will you be the one to believe in Christ for that person? Will you be the one to go and represent that love them to them?

I have to say that this Christian love talked about in First John looks an awful lot like my mother! You know, despite my greatest failings, she has always believed the best for me. Despite my many flaws, she has always seen me as the most beautiful kid on the block. Despite all my human limitations – she still sees me as having potential for true greatness. And she’s constantly at work trying to bring those gifts to me.

Thanks for that kind of love, mom. And happy Mother’s Day!

We all need someone who will love us in the NAME of Jesus!

Do you believe in his NAME? Then go and bring it with love to others!