John 14:1-14

In every job, there are mistakes that can get you in real trouble. With pastors, there are not too many ways to make mistakes since we only work on Sunday, but one of the ways to get into trouble is to forget a name. I became aware of this as a student intern. I like to learn names, so I was trying anyway, but I called a guy by the wrong name one Sunday and he was offended. Later I learned he was the richest guy in the church and couldn’t believe I forgot him. That’s always been a problem with me. If you’re richer than I am, I try to forget!

In my last church, I took pictures the first Sunday I was there to get the names memorized. Two of people who attended were mother and daughter. The mother was quite good looking and so the second Sunday, I mixed them up and called them sisters. I got corrected and vowed to try harder. So the next Sunday I remembered that they were mother and daughter and turned to the younger one and said, Ruth, how is your daughter today?

Jesus came to earth to know our names. We have the only religion where God visited the planet to grow up in poverty, live thru the death of a loved one in Joseph, see the beauty of the Jordan River, and know us as we are, sheep lost without a shepherd. That is why I am confident of Jesus’ promises to you, because he has lived our life, experienced our challenges, and promises enough grace for victory.

So this morning, we are going to look at Jesus’ name. In the gospel of John, Jesus says over and over “I am”. Some of those names are familiar to you. And I pray that you will receive new grace for living as we look at more of them this morning.

The Bible records over 200 names for God. One of the reasons that I am not a fundamentalist is that I see the Bible as a palette of many rich colors that try to describe God and the plan to save us. The Bible is not a rule book, but stories of other people who have been saved so that we can see how God dealt with them. And its stories of people who got into trouble so that we can see how bad things get started. And one of the Bible treasures is God using name after name so that we get a rich picture of the character of God. Who is God? It takes the Bible 200 names to answer that question. Many are male names. Some in Proverbs and the gospels are female names.

And in John’s gospel now, we have heard some of those as Jesus says, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life.

Our tendency is to take a few of the names of God that we like the most and make a picture from them. It doesn’t work. We all have got some sins we are working on. So we are drawn to the names of God that don’t disturb anything. Do you see how that works? What a Friend we have in Jesus! Is there anybody here who doesn’t like that song? They say that bank robbers in the middle of a job like to hum that song. There is no way that name of God is going to trouble you.

I got married in Buffalo in a church that was in an Italian blue collar neighborhood. So when they added the stained glass windows, they had no money for blue or red. Those are the most expensive colors of stained glass. They used brown, green, yellow, and orange and made geometric shapes. At the time I started going to church, I never noticed. You don’t go into a church and think, wow this is a great church. They used all the colors in their stained glass.

Then I got married there. And because we were poor, a friend offered to take the wedding pictures for free. Since he was not a professional, he never thought about the effect of stained glass that was missing two colors. He didn’t use a filter to correct for it. So in our wedding photos, the bride is dressed in green and I met her in yellow!

Other names of God are familiar, but not as precious as God intends. Jesus is the Lamb of God, pictured in Isaiah as standing silently in the face of oppression, obedient, bleeding, wounded. We secretly hope for power and pomp. One reason we have gone into Iraq militarily is that Christians do not resonate to Jesus’ ways for dealing with sin in our world. We hope to obliterate. The song says ‘He Could have called 10,000 angels’ Unfortunately, we forget that he didn’t. And we have seen that Iraq is increasing in violence. Jesus says I am the way. That means that there is no other way. No other way that works. If violence would contain evil and bring hope and salvation, Jesus would have done it. Humanity has the power to destroy but only Jesus, the way, will contain evil and bring hope and salvation.

And then there are rare names that can offer delight. Even Christians are caught up in the political struggles of this age. Regardless of your views of Christian faith and how it works out socially, it is exhausting to see this struggle among Christians. And so I turn with delight to Jesus as dayspring, the morning star, the true light that lightens the world. Jesus is the dawn that cheers us. When we stay fixed on our faith, faithful in prayer, Christlike in spirit, I believe God the Holy Spirit draws faithful people closer together.

We live in the most violent age of the world. More people were killed in the 20^th century than any other. So it is not strange that our world is troubled, It is not strange that Christians are reading this precious Book and finding different pictures of God. We all need to keep reading the names of God and accepting them so that our pictures of God are not just made of yellow and green.

Word, light, life, bread, vine, judge, king, and lamb. He is all of these and if you call upon him, he is even more. He is the Rock, living water, Lord, sun, servant, way, truth, life.

He knows you. Will you risk knowing him more? That name, above every name, wants you to call today, wants your loyalty and service. If you are struggling in life, take the name of God that seems to most minister to you, and right now, say – Jesus I will trust you as bread for strength, or Jesus, I will trust you as judge to settle my unfair boss, or Jesus, as the Dawn, I accept that your light is not easy for our darkened world to accept. Jesus, my Lord. I accept you. Will you?