More Than a Name

Christian Community Presbyterian Church
Bowie, Maryland
April 12, 2026

More Than a Name
Acts2:14a, 22-32

Faith is a mental activity for many Christians. As we tend the intellectual side of our faith we often squelch its emotional aspects. Our heads and hearts get out of balance. We don’t come to church as half people, leaving either our brains or our hearts in the parking lot. God calls us to use all the gifts, talents, and capabilities of our minds and hearts.

We also often wall up our faith behind sealed lips. We go to church, but guard our faith like we do our computer passwords. Where’s the “Forgot Password” link for church? Christian spirituality ranges from faith that erupts like a volcano to faith that glows gently. In between are many kinds of faith experiences that are practiced privately or shared publicly.

Our Quaker sisters and brothers have a spiritual practice of sharing accountability for each other’s faith. Several will sit with one who is trying to in the midst of discernment and they use questions to prompt reflection and prayer. One of those questions is, “When did God become more than a name to you?”

That’s easier asked than answered. We talk about God at Christmas and Easter; we learned mealtime or bedtime prayers. The word “God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance when some of us were young. Our money says we trust in God. We also hear God’s name used abusively. The question persists: When did the name become more than a vocabulary word.

Let’s make this personal: “When did Jesus become more than a name TO YOU?” As the echoes of the “Alleluias” fade away, our heads can say with the gospel writer John, “Jesus is the Word become flesh.” John isn’t writing about linguistic characters printed on paper or pixilated on LCD screens. If the Word became flesh, then there are eyes looking into our eyes, hands reaching out for our hands, lips ready to speak peace to our world-ravished souls.

When did Jesus become more than a name to your heart? When did the phrase, “Christ is risen,” become more than a song lyric? By gradual understanding or by lightning bolt experience, your spirit arrived at the realization that “Jesus” was more than the name of someone who lived two thousand years ago.

Moses wanted to see God’s ID, just like the TSA people ask us for identification at the airport. God was hesitant to give out a name. God didn’t want to be imprisoned in a few vocalized sounds or by random vowels and consonants.

God did not want to use a given name. People followed pantheons of gods and knew them by names that described their functions or idiosyncracies. God was bigger than that. God could not be entombed by symbols and sounds. At some point God becomes more than all that. God who creates becomes personal, the Spirit who empowers becomes personal, the risen Jesus who saves becomes personal.

Peter’s Pentecost sermon pushes the question. The Spirit had arrived full-force in the midst of the Pentecost Festival when Jews from the diaspora had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Truth Social or X didn’t exist, so they were unaware of the allegedly treasonous Nazarean rabbi condemned as a heretic by the Temple leadership and executed by the Roman overlords. There was no whiff of the government coverup about an empty tomb. The name Jesus was nothing to the pious visitors.

But to Peter, to the other ten original disciples, to Nicodemus, to Mary Magdalene and the women who discovered the empty tomb, to a Samaritan woman at Sychar, to a man born blind who gained his sight, to Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, to a Roman centurion, to a formerly leprous Samaritan, to Zaccheaus, to countless others who had been welcomed, healed, forgiven, blessed, Jesus was more than a name.

“Listen up!” Peter shouts to the crowd. “This Jesus, whom you crucified, is more than just a name. He is more than a prophet and a good man. He is the Messiah, the Holy One proclaimed by David and our other prophets. This is the Savior for whom we have been waiting for generations. Every single one of you is a witness to this truth. Whether you saw Jesus with your own eyes or are now hearing the good news for the very first time, you are a witness to what I am telling you today.”(1)

It is hard for us to imagine the power of Peter’s Spirit-filled preaching because we have heard the Easter story so often. But what was it like the first time YOU heard it? The first time you heard it with more than your brain? No crowd estimate is given, yet 3,000 people were convicted with the belief that Jesus is more than a name. Language was not a barrier. People got the message: Jesus wasn’t a random news item. He was and is more than his name. He is Lord and Savior.

Peter said to the Pentecost crowd, “Let Jesus be more than a name. Let Christ be your Savior. Hear with your heart as well as your ears. Then you can proclaim Jesus as Lord and know the joy of Christ’s amazing saving grace.”(2)

Paul and the early Gentile Church said, “God ... gave [Jesus] a name above all names” (Philippians 2:9). The executed Nazarean rabbi had a name. It was printed on a placard attached to the cross: “This is Jesus, King of the Jews.” That name gives power to the cross, making it a powerful symbol for the name and all that the name of Jesus entails. Pope Leo XIV has said,

“The cross is part of the mission. The imperialist occupation of the world is disrupted from within; the violence that until now has been the law is unmasked. The poor, imprisoned, and rejected Messiah descends into the darkness of death, yet in so doing He brings a new creation to light.”

Our encounter with the name of Jesus disrupted the lives we once had. It showed the falsity of the perceptions of the world that entombed us in self-centeredness and fear. The name of Jesus became a supernova that changed us, our world view, our relationships. Jesus was more than a name. Jesus was life, Jesus was hope, Jesus was Lord.

Easter is more than one day for lilies, dyed eggs, and chocolate bunnies. Easter is a movement, a revolution that frees the soul from the tomb of sin’s consequences. As Peter preached, Easter broke forth in the lives of people. They returned to their homelands and shared it with family and friends. They created incubators of faith ripe for Paul and other first generation traveling apostles. Jesus was not going to be put back into the tomb. Resurrection was pandemic.

Is Jesus more than a name to you? Is your Easter faith filled with such an awe that you see the world differently? Is Jesus just a name, like so many other names written or spoken by journalists? Or is Jesus the Savior who has changed your life, focused your destiny, made sense out of the chaos that buffets you every day?

Every time we gather around the Lord’s table we proclaim the name of Jesus. When we take the common elements of bread and juice we name the one who transforms our gray, nondescript going-nowhere-fast lives into neon representations of full-bodied, God-celebrating lives.

The question is not simply a past-tense question, “When did Jesus become more than a name to you?” but rather a forward reaching question, “How is Jesus more than a name to you right now, today, and all the tomorrows in your life?”

The Lord is risen! Alleluia! Amen.

    (1) Kathleen Long Bostrom, “Acts 2:141, 22-32: Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) Year A, volume 2, p. 378)
    (2) Ibid.