May 3, 2009Fourth Sunday After Easter (B)Acts 4:5-12
Ever since Adam named the animals, we have been fascinated with names. New parents spend countless hours choosing names for their sons and daughters. Lovers may not be able to lasso the moon and give it away as George Bailey promised Mary in
It’s a Wonderful Life, but for a few bucks they can have a star named in their loved one’s honor.
Those of us who lived through the ’70s recall the popularity of the Citizens’ Band (C.B.) radio. No one on the C.B. had a “name” but a “handle.” Names are natural handles for grabbing someone’s attention. How often in a crowded room have you snapped your head around, as if someone grabbed you by the collar, because you thought you heard your name? Psychologically, names of diseases make us feel better. When the doctor is finally able to put a name to our sickness, it eases our pain because we assume that if the affliction can be named, it can be cured. From antiquity people believed names to possess a magical quality. Knowing a spirit’s name gave one a handle to control the spirit.
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Shakespeare penned, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” The mangled version of that quote has it that “a rose by any other name is still a rose”—the implication being that names are arbitrary. They may be full of sound and fury but in the end signify nothing. Really? What then are we to make of that story from last December about the New Jersey boy named “Adolf Hitler,” whose name the local grocery store refused to put on a birthday cake? Contra the popular “a rose is still a rose” postmodern blather, names still mean something.
What about the name “Jesus”? It—and its Old Testament equivalent “Joshua”—was a common enough name in ancient Israel and still is in Latin America. To some, “Jesus” is a byword, a profane utterance. To others His name is a talisman—speak it and wonderful things will happen.
In Acts 3 and 4 Jesus’ name is front and center—mentioned in
3:6,
16;
4:7,
10,
12,
17, 18 and
30. In Jesus’ name Peter and John healed a man who laid daily at Gate Beautiful of the temple begging for handouts. Instead, Peter gave him a miraculous hand up (4:7). When that man who was formerly lame went leaping and singing and praising God into the temple, a crowd gathered and the apostles had some explaining to do.
