The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
December 28, 2003 

God’s Name for You
John 1

They say that first impressions matter most. Well, our Gospel reading reminds me of a very bad first impression I once made. Victoria and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail. At this point, we had hiked more than 100 miles and were just on edge of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. During that 100 plus miles of hiking, we had heard much about a couple further up the trail. He was a Winnebago Indian who had been roughing it in the woods for years. She was a retired librarian. They had met on the Appalachian Trail the previous year, fell in love and been married. Now they were attempting a hike from Georgia to Maine. As they were ahead of us on the trail, we followed behind hearing about them from others. We knew them, but they did not know us. 

When we walked up to the Fontana Dam A.T. Shelter, I saw a couple who could, to my eyes, be none other than Harry and Jeannie. As we walked up, I said, “You must be Harry.” He looked at me as if I had slapped him in the face and walked away. Jeannie came out and met us. She tried to patch things over, but Harry just said, “Who is he to tell me who I am.” 

Over time, we ended up soothing the hurt of that bad first impression, but it took a lot of time to rebuild trust. Harry knew something ancient that I had forgotten, the power of words, the power of a name. In most cultures, including the Hebrew culture Jesus was born into, a name was vitally important as a word carries the essence of the thing it identifies. 

Jesus name in Hebrew is Yeshua and it means “God saves.” That same name is also anglicanized as Joshua. Both Joshua and Jesus are ways to say the Hebrew name Yeshua. It was a common enough name. For Jesus, the name was his essence. At his core, Jesus was and is God’s promised salvation for the creation. 

To go back a bit to the start of things, in the beginning, the first man was given the task of naming all the animals. That scene showed mankind as being the stewards of creation. To give something its name was to tell it its essence and that showed a sort of power. To see just how powerful a name can be, recall the story of creation itself where God calls light into being with a word alone.  

If I may be permitted a little aside. We have here in front of the altar the stained glass window that will be placed this week over the altar in our new building. It shows the Holy Spirit hovering in bodily form as a dove. We get this image of the Holy Spirit from the description in the Gospel’s of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River. The Holy Spirit descended there as a dove and the image has stuck. But for this window, the idea is the Holy Spirit, but not on the occasion of Jesus’ baptism. Instead, the inspiration is Genesis chapter one where the Spirit of God hovers over the waters at the moment of creation. The swirls of blues and purples show the swirling waters of chaos being brought into the order of creation by the Spirit of God.  

Sometimes we get teaching that sounds like first there was God, then came God’s son Jesus and finally the Holy Spirit. But, we know that God was a Trinity of persons before the creation of all that is. In fact, that is exactly what John is trying to teach in this prologue to his Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word” is his way of saying “In the same in the beginning as the in the beginning in Genesis, Jesus, the very essence of God was there, for all things came into being through him.” 

For the same depth of meaning my Winnebago Indian friend Harry had for a word was part of the Greek with which the New Testament is written. In ancient Greek, the word for “word” is Logos, which means word, thing, or matter, because a word is also the thing itself or the matter it describes. Harry knew this and he did not understand why a stranger would dare tell him what his essence is even as we first meet.  

The Word that was God was the fullness of God. John is telling us that that Word is Jesus. When we say, “Jesus” we are proclaiming the fullness of who God is and how God acts. This is the heart of the Christmas story—the essence of God rested in that vulnerable little baby in the manger—for the Word which was before the foundation of the world took on human flesh and lived among us.  

John knows this well for he writes, “he lived among us and we saw his glory.” John is speaking of his own first-person experience as a Christ follower. In fact, this whole prologue, which sounds a bit unearthly with its theological language, is based in the real-life pain and joy John felt as a disciple.  

Listen to the pain of a devoted disciple as John writes, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.” John had trouble understanding why everyone could not immediately see the truth that Jesus was the Word, the essence of God in human form. And most painful of all was that his fellow Jews did not all get it. He wrote, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” 

But John could still find grace for he wrote, “But to all who received him, who believed his name, he gave power to become children of God.” With that statement, John turns from the Word, the essence of God, to us.  

What is your essence? Have you wondered since this sermon began what your name says about you? Will I be Frank with you because that is my name? Will Victoria be victorious or will Celeste be celestial, heavenly? John points to the deeper truth of who you are at your essence. The word that the Word of God has for you is “child.” You are a child of God. Not a second cousin twice removed, great-grandchild, or a step-child. You are God’s own beloved child.  

That’s why Paul wrote the Galatians that “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a child, and if a child then also an heir.” 

Paul knew what John knew, and what was at the back of Harry’s mind that evening on the Appalachian Trail. No other human knows you well enough to tell you who you are. If you listen to other people they will call you all sorts of things. Kids name each other awful things like “stupid” or “ugly” or worse. People will name you all sorts of hurtful things. But those are not the names to which you should listen.  

In his earthly ministry, Jesus met people others named "leper," "adulterer," and "outcast." He named them "child" and told them that he loved them. So, listen to the one whose spirit has been speaking to your spirit since you were being formed in your mother’s womb. The word God has been speaking to you all along is “child.” God is saying to you that you are my beloved child.  

This is the light that dispels the darkness the creator of all that is saying to you if you will believe in my name, I will name you as my own. 

Amen.