Names Are More Powerful Than You Think, Especially This One. Here's Why

It always happened when we got my dad mad.   He’d call us, his own kids by the wrong name!  He’d call me Jesse, my brother’s name or one of my sisters’ name.   Sometimes, he’d run through the whole list until he got to the right one.   We’d correct him, usually with a sarcastic tone.   No, I’m Ken, dad.   That irritated him! 

But I get it.  He had five kids.  But I don’t have that excuse.   I’ve got one kid.  Yet it still happens. Sometimes my cat, Moonie can’t decide if he wants to come in off the porch or not.  It drives me nuts.  So, in my irritation, out it comes, Patrick, in or out?  Or it’ll happen the other way, and Patrick becomes Moonie.   Sheesh, at least my dad got confused between human beings.   I get confused between two different species!  

I’m not surprised.   I struggle with names.  Too often, folks remember my name, but I can’t remember theirs.   I remember where I met them; when I last saw them; even the latest news they shared, but that name.   That just escapes me.   It drives me nuts.  Names are important.   It matters when someone knows your name.   You try to think of good names for your kids or even your pets.  

But too often, you can miss how you can mess up the most important name of all.   Yet when you mess up this name, it leads to disillusionment, to disbelief, to a disastrous disconnection between the name and the reality.   How do you make sure you get that name right?  In these words, God shows the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.  

Exodus20:7

You might be wondering.   How did this one end up in the top ten?   Is saying a bad word that bad?   But God isn’t talking so much about that. What God is telling you here, goes deeper than a curse word.   God is talking about the power of a name.   

In the ancient world, people thought.  If you knew someone’s name, especially the name of a God, you had power.  They were kind of right.   A name does have power.  If you know someone’s name, you can stop the person right in their tracks.   If someone calls your name, isn’t that what happens?  It stops you.  You look around.  You check out who called me.  But the power of a name goes beyond that.  A name can change your life.  It can change the life of the world.   

Near my dad’s home in Georgia, you’ll find a place called Eagle Ranch.   There on this multi-million-dollar campus, a dedicated staff cares for about a hundred children.  Their parents are in such crisis, they can no longer live with them.   And how did this place, Eagle Ranch, begin?  It began with the power of a name.   A guy named Eddie Staub had a dream for this home.  But he and his wife had nothing.  They were literally living out of their car.   But somehow Eddie got a meeting with a wealthy Christian named Loyd Strickland.   Eddie told him of his dream of this home.  Lloyd listened.  Then he wrote a check for $10,000.00.  But Lloyd did far more thanthat.  He gave Eddie the names and numbers of 20 of his friends.  Lloyd said, “Call them.  Tell them.  Lloyd Strickland asked you to call. Then when you meet, say to them.  “Lloyd Strickland believes in you and your dream and he wants you to believe too.”   With the power of that name, Eddie’s dream became a reality.  It happened because Lloyd Strickland not only gave a check to Eddie’s vision, he gave his name. 

Names carry power.  And if Lloyd Strickland’s name had that power, can you imagine the power of God’s name?   When God gave the Israelites that name, God was saying to them, “I’m giving you access to me, to my power in your life.  You are now the people called by my name.”  And with that name comes responsibility.   So God says here.  Don’t misuse it.  Honor me by honoring my name.”   It makes sense. 

If Eddie had used Lloyd’s name to make himself rich, how horrible that would be, to misuse his name like that.   But you don’t have to go there.  Just think of one of the scariest crimes of the modern age, identity theft.   What is identity theft?  It’s a misuse and abuse of your name?  And nobody wants that ever.  Why? Once someone has abused your name like that, it’s incredibly hard to get it back.   Do you see what God is telling you here?  

God is saying here; “I’m trusting you with my name.   Don’t abuse it.”   That’s how the commandment got connected with cursing?   If you say God damn something, you’re saying a prayer.   You’re asking God to damn someone, to cast that person out of God’s presence.  Now, you may not like something or somebody, but do you really want that?  Do you want to damn them?   But abusing God’s name goes beyond that.   It goes to how you live your life. 

Pretty much every day during the week, I wear a shirt that has our church’s logo on it.  This past Thursday, I was impatient to get into a store.   I sort of rudely rushed past the person going into the store ahead of me.  Then I thought.  Oh, I hope she didn’t notice my shirt.   I realized.   I was carrying this church’s name wherever I went.   And if I messed up, they wouldn’t know my name. But they could see this name.     

But I don’t just represent the church.   No God has given me and you a much deeper identity.   Early in the life of the Jesus movement, outsiders began to give Jesus followers a name.   They called them Christ-ians.   Christians.  Do you get it?  Every day, if you follow Jesus, you carry around his name.  

Almost twenty years ago, two Christian researchers, Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman, wrote a book on the perceptions of outsiders between 18 and 29 towards Christians.   And the words they reported hearing again and again sent shock waves through American Christianity.  How did these outsiders see Christians? They used these words: judgmental, anti-homosexual, self-righteous, overly political, and the list goes on.   And so, Lyons and Kinnaman entitled the book on their findings, UnChristian.  That’s how these outsiders saw Christians, as un-Christian.  Talk about identity theft.   

That’s why this vision God has given the church I serve; of Inviting and Welcoming Everyone into God’s amazing Love, is so important.   Because here’s the truth, if you and I are honest, we’ve had our own moments of identity theft.  We’ve carried the name of Christ, when we were not acting like Christ at all.   But even in those moments, God still invites us home.  God still welcomes you.  God still loves you.   And if God does that for you in your worst moments, then God does that for everyone.   Yet so many don’t know that.   They don’t know God invites them like that, that God welcomes them like that.  They don’t know Jesus loves them like that.   And how will they know? They will only know if those who bear Jesus’ name show them, tell them, if Christians live out that welcome and love ourselves, in everything they do and are. 

How do you do that?  On your own, you can’t.   But you’re not on your own.  You can let the name of the one who lives in you do what you cannot.  Remember how Jesus invited you into the love.  Remember how Jesus still welcomes you even on your worst days.  Look at that cross, and see how deep and wide, how full and rich and beautiful his love for you is.   And as you let that love grow in you, Jesus will shape you into the reality of the name you bear.   As Jesus has invited you, he will give you the loving boldness to invite family members, friends, neighbors into the love.  And as that love fills you, it will flow out in welcome and love to everyone you meet, to everyone who encounters this Christ in you.  You will discover.  Jesus has inscribed his name on your very heart.  And you will realize what the Christian, Paul, meant when he said, “It is no longer who I live.  It is Christ who lives in me.”   Amen.