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    Aug 14, 2016

    What Is Your Name?

    Passage: Luke 8:26-30

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    Series: What Did Jesus Ask?

    Category: Jesus' Teachings

    Keywords: healing, restoration

    Jesus frequently cut to the heart of the matter, always seeing beyond what was visible on the surface. With the man possessed by demons, Jesus saw the man's humanity and offered it back to him by asking, What is your name?

    Today we are beginning a new series based on a book recommended by a ministry colleague, What Did Jesus Ask? Each chapter is written by a different person of faith, most of them to some degree famous in the faith leader world. There are well-known pastors and theologians, some bishops in various denominations, including our own, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Ecumenical Patriarch or Archbishop of Constantinople who is the worldwide leader of Orthodox churches. Then there are people like Roma Downey and Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant. The chapters are usually very thoughtful, some quite personal. And each chapter is focused on one question that Jesus asked.

    I’d like to read to you the first paragraph of the Foreword, written by Nancy Gibbs, the editor of Time:

    This book was born of a conversation between a journalist and a surgeon – people, you might say, for whom questions matter. The doctor looking to diagnose, the journalist looking to discover, believe that in the strength and sharpness of the question lies the possibility of a meaningful answer, one that shines light or breaks ground. I can’t remember when it was that my friend Dr. Scott Haig first raised the topic of the questions Jesus asked, but I remember being intrigued, particularly since in this case the questions are of a wholly different nature. On the one hand, people of free will can answer them any way they choose; on the other, an all-knowing God already knows the answer. So why ask?

    “Why ask?” is a question about questions, and that is the theme this book explores, through the eyes, insights and experiences of more than 70 theologians from many schools of Christianity.1

    The questions were chosen by our Worship Teams out of a list that I had generated based on some of the people who wrote the chapters.

    Today we begin with a question that we heard last month in the story of the Gerasene demoniac in Luke 8. .Actually, today's reading is only a part of the story – enough for us to explore this question: What is your name?

    Quite a long time ago, I had a young friend who was 11 years old and finishing elementary school. As if going to middle school wasn’t enough of a stressful event, his family moved that year, so he found himself in an unfamiliar neighborhood with no friends. And did I mention that he struggled significantly with change? As they prepared for the new school year, his mom took him to the barber shop to get a new haircut – a rather normal thing to do – right!?! As was the style of the day, my young friend decided he would get a spike cut – kind of like a Mohawk with his hair gelled stiff so it would stand up in spikes right down the middle. Mom found out later that he also told everyone at school that his name was Spike, and he was doing everything he could to live up to that name!  A mutual friend told me that he actually had a chair in the principal's office with his name on it!

    Don’t let anyone tell you that names are not important or that they never have an influence on the one who bears the name!

    The writer of this week’s chapter, Yolanda Pierce, director of the Center for Black Church Studies and an associate professor of African-American Religion and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary, tells a very different naming story. She wrote:

    I recently observed a veteran kindergarten teacher during her morning routine. First she greeted each child at the door. After the students had put away their belongings in their individually labeled cubbies, she took a vebal roll call. She called each student by his or her full name – first, middle, last – their serious adult names that their 5-year-old bodies had yet to grow into. And each child, apparently accustomed to the routine, answered her with a firm “Present.” I left the classroom thinking about what it means for someone to call us by our full names. What does it mean for someone to know our name and to care that we are present when our name is called?

    …The story [before us today] is ultimately a story about the power of naming names.2

    One more story. I once had the great privilege to take a class taught by Eugene Peterson – the pastor who translated the Bible into what we know as The Message. In assigning our final project for the class, he told us of the project that he would remember the rest of his life.

    One of the women who took his class was a school crossing guard. He didn’t know why she decided to take his class. She wasn’t even remotely considering a career in ministry. She was, however, considering her vocation as a disciple of Jesus.

    In her final project she spent a number of weeks talking with the children who crossed at her corner, and she wrote that she saw it as an act of baptism for her to learn each child’s name and to call them by name every day as they walked to school and again as they walked home. She observed that this act of ministry – naming each child as one of God’s children – had a deep effect on her – herself, whether it had an obvious effect on the children or not. Some of the children did seem to alter their behavior. After all, Ms. So-and-So knows who I am! Hmmm.

    The crossing guard found herself praying for the children and loving them, looking out for them in new ways that had little to do with being a crossing guard.

    As we saw a few weeks back when we explored the healing of the man who was alone and naked, living in a cemetery, he had no one. Everyone was afraid of him.

    Yolanda Pierce says that:

    …when Jesus asks the Gerasene his name, he provokes the man to identify his true nature and essence, to proclaim how he understands himself. When the man answers that his name is “Legion,” the reader knows that not only has he forgotten his true name but also that his very identity has become his demon-possessed condition.

    …This question, “What is your name?” prompts the verbal identification of those forces that had stolen this man’s joy, peace and sanity.3

    …When Jesus asks the Gerasene “What is your name?” he begins the first step in the healing process: naming that which has caused the harm…While Jesus sees the man’s distressing condition, by asking for his name, Jesus sees beyond the man’s physical circumstances and psychological state. Jesus affirms that this confused man is still someone worthy of dignity, respect and restoration to his rightful name and identity.4

    The effect of this story doesn’t end with the restoration of this man’s dignity and respect. Remember the crossing guard? If we just take the time to see beyond the immediate to the deeper ramifications, we will see how the question that Jesus asks affects us all –the man with the demon, and disciples and community. It is a direct call to view our neighbors with Christ’s eyes and heart. And it is also a call to name those things that get in our way – the hold us back – that steal our joy and rob us of intimate relationship when our “demons” push others from our lives.

    Dr. Pierce again:

    By thinking about the question Jesus poses [in this story], we can shift our attention away from the behavior of so-called demon possession and onto the healing and restoration possible when someone who has lost everything and everyone is finally seen as fully human and still worthy of love and recognition. There is a promise of God found in the Old Testament book of Isaiah: “I have called you by name, you are mine.” When Jesus asks “What is your name?” he echoes this promise that everyone, irrespective of his or her physical or mental condition, is known, called and embraced by God.5

    All I can say is – Amen to that!

    Footnotes

    1.  Elizabeth Dias, Editor.  What Did Jesus Ask?  Copyright © 2015 by Time Inc. Books.  From Foreword by Nancy Gibbs, page ix.

    2.    Ibid., From Chapter What is your name? by Yolanda Pierce, page 89.

    3.  Ibid.,page 90.

    4.  Ibid., page 91

    5.  Ibid.