Names (Second Sunday after Pentecost)
Sermons on YouTube…
Names are important in the Bible. Sometimes, a name is important because it tells us something about the person or the place. Sometimes, a name is important because it identifies an actual person through whom God acted, making it clear that the story isn’t just a “once upon a time” fairytale. And frequently, trying to pronounce the names is what might make the story memorable!
But here’s the other thing about a name. In the Bible, a name is NOT – as Shakespeare wrote – just a name. A name actually has the power to invoke the presence of an individual or even a spiritual being. And so speaking a name – or even knowing the name – gives power.
This is really the idea behind the Second Commandment. “You shall not make vain use of the name of the LORD your God.” And that’s because using the name of God actually calls God to be present, and brings the very presence of God into your conversation and situation. It’s not to be taken lightly or frivolously. Names have power.
This is why angels frequently won’t tell people their names. And why there’s this seemingly strange thing in the book of Revelation about people receiving a “new name that no one knows except the one who receives it” (Rev. 2:17). That’s because if evil doesn’t know your “real” name, it can’t own you. Names have power.
In Confirmation class, I often illustrate this concept using the Harry Potter movies where nobody is supposed to name “he who shall not be named”… But, the Harry Potter books got the is concept from the Bible, where a name itself has power.
And names are really important in understanding today’s Gospel reading. The story begins as Jesus and his disciples have crossed the Sea of Galilee (which is really just a large, fresh water lake), and have landed on the eastern side of the lake, which is Gentile territory (you can tell this by the fact that they raise pigs there!)
And here, Jesus meets a guy possessed by demons. There’s the usual description of how bad the demons have made life for this poor guy. And as we’d expect, Jesus commands the demons to come out of the man.
But then, in the midst of this exorcism, Jesus asks the demon, “What is your name?”
Here, as elsewhere in the Bible, the idea is that if you know the demon’s name, you have power over it. And if the demon tells Jesus its name, it’s toast! Of course, because it’s Jesus who’s asking, the demon is toast anyway. And so equivocating on the name doesn’t help … (when the demon says, “Legion”, it’s just a number – a Roman Legion was a military regiment of about 6000 soldiers.)
But Jesus learns the name of the demon and – at least as Luke tells the story – that’s part of the way that Jesus rids the guy of the demons in his life.
There’s a good lesson there, because sometimes naming the demons in our own lives helps us to identify them and overcome them. After all, sometimes, the “demons” we name are our own personal demons – our fears, our prejudices or simply the scripts in the back of our minds that tell us we’re not good enough, strong enough or smart enough to do what we want to do.
And sometimes, our “demons” are the big things that infect our word – whether the “demon” is racism, sexism, or a pervasive suspicion which temps me to dislike anybody who’s opinion on anything is even slightly different than my own.
Often, naming the demons is still important. Naming the demons helps us to recognize them, face them, and confront them.
Still, naming the demon isn’t enough. And it’s actually not the most important thing in today’s story. After all, the guy with the demon knew the demon pretty well before Jesus showed up. Folks around him had done all they could to confront and contain the demon. And in the end, Jesus didn’t actually need to know the demon’s name to cast it out.
Right up to the end of the story, the guy who was possessed by the demon never knew the demon’s name. But he now knew the name of hope, because he knew the name of Jesus.
And the name of Jesus is actually the most important name in the story, because that’s the name that really has the power, and that’s the name that could bring hope and healing to others.
And that’s why Jesus didn’t tell the guy to talk about the demons or warn others about demons. Instead, he told the guy to go and tell others how much God had done for him.
And that’s what he does – sort of. Because he goes off and tells people not about God in general, but about how much Jesus had done for him. He names Jesus. And in so doing, he probably didn’t talk about the danger of demons, or his own personal struggle, but the One in whom people could find hope. He names Jesus. He names hope.
The point of this story is that hope is named. And maybe that’s why Luke included it. He means by this story that Jesus intends us to be people who can not only name the demons in our lives, but more importantly can name our hope.
Indeed, there are lots of folks in our world who are really good at helping us name the demons – reporters, political commentators, psychologists and comedians. And that’s a good thing. And it doesn’t mean that we also don’t need to name the demons, too.
But what Jesus really needs for us to do is to be people who name hope. That’s what the world really lacks right now. And people don’t need just amorphous, generalized hope. They need the hope we know in Jesus.
We don’t really know exactly how this guy in the Gospel shared his hope in Jesus, but often in our lives, naming the hope we have in Jesus comes by:
- Projecting our confidence in the One who can and will defeat the demons, even when we can’t … (that is, we’re not supposed to be confident in our ability to defeat the “demons”, or in the eventual progress of human enlightenment, but in God’s power, at the last, to defeat every kind of evil and every kind of demon…);
- Having the courage to act as people who have already been freed from the demons that tell us that there is no hope … I can’t fix the world, but I can live each day as somebody who doesn’t buy into the message of the demons who tell me I can’t make a difference by the small ways I resist evil in my life; Jesus has already freed me to do that, and Jesus has freed you, too …
- Sharing the love of Jesus even and especially with others in our world who don’t believe in Jesus, or even in God – after all, Jesus was in a place where in the end nobody wanted him. But he doesn’t send the guy back to tell others about judgement and bondage, but simply to share the love of God in a place it hadn’t been before…
We don’t usually think of “demons” in the same way as ancient people. But we know the demons who infect our lives and our world. Others know them, too, and it’s often helpful to name them.
But our most important mission as Christians is to name hope. And our hope is not in ourselves, our programs or our ability to change the world. Our hope is Jesus.
Jesus is our hope, because Jesus shows us that he can and will defeat even the demons we can’t name. Jesus is our hope, because Jesus shows us that he can and will defeat the demons we can’t defeat, no matter how hard we try. And Jesus is our hope, because Jesus shows us that he can and will even defeat the demon of death.
And so whenever you face the demons of your life, go ahead and name the demons. But never forget to name hope. Name hope to yourself and name hope to others. And whether it’s by how you speak, or act, or simply the attitude you convey, make it clear that even when the world seems hopelessly bound by the demons, there is hope in Jesus.
Amen.