Like Our Namesake--September 18, 2024

Like Our Namesake--September 18, 2024

"The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher,

that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.

Morning by morning he wakens--

wakens my ear to listen as though who are taught.

The Lord GOD has opened my ear,

and I was not rebellious,

I did not turn backward.

I gave my back to those who struck me,

and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;

I did not hide my face

from insult and spitting." [Isaiah 50:4-9]

So, truth in advertising, as a native of the Cleveland area, I grew up both rooting for--and often being perplexed by--the Cleveland Browns. (If the Lion, Bengals, or Steelers loyalists among those who read this cannot in good conscience allow their eyes to view anything that suggests learning something positive from the Browns, consider this your warning.) My complicated relationship with my hometown football team was, of course, sometimes from the fact that they so often managed to rip defeat from the jaws of victory in new and heartbreaking ways, but also it came from my hang-up about their name.

As a kid, I just assumed the name of the team came from the color brown, which was in the color scheme of their uniforms and went with the orange color of the team helmet and logo. And basically, I figured the color uniforms came first (like the Chicago White Sox or Boston Red Sox), maybe by random chance, and then that the name stuck after that.

Turns out, of course, I was wrong. As you may already well know, and as an older me learned, the name wasn't chosen at random just because of the coincidental color of the jerseys, but because of the team's founding coach, Paul Brown. During Brown's tenure with the Cleveland team, they won four championships in the All-American Football Conference (in the days before there were Super Bowls), and his legacy was important enough that the team kept the name, the color, and all the rest (including occasional mascot "Brownie the Elf"--because, of course). All of that is to say that the name for the team turns out not to be just a fluke or an accident of history, but was directly connected to the man who first created and coached the team. What might have at first seemed just incidental about their identity turns out to have been deeply rooted in their founder and leader, and who he was.  The team was his namesake, and therefore took its identity of the legacy of his leadership.

I know this seems a strange place to start a reflection on words from the Bible (although I still maintain that rooting for a perpetual underdog like the Cleveland Browns is good for the soul), but I'm going to ask you to follow me for a moment and see the method to my madness. In a passage like this one from the book of Isaiah, which many of us heard read this past Sunday in worship, we get a picture that the church has consistently understood in light of Jesus. That is to say, even if the prophet himself wasn't picturing Jesus yet when he spoke these words, in hindsight we can look back and better understand Jesus through these words. And here the prophet speaks of someone who does not answer evil with evil, but rather bears the insults and mockery of others without retaliation... but rather with love. He doesn't stop to defend his honor, his reputation, his perceived "greatness" in the world, but rather bears the worst his enemies can do to him, and endures--without "turning backward" or giving way to hatred in return. This figure, this "servant" figure whom Isaiah's later chapters spends some time talking about, does not return abuse for abuse or cruelty with cruelty, but bears it with suffering love.  That is the servant's way--and, as Isaiah 50 tells it, it is God's way as well.

And the more I think about it, the more it becomes clear to me that this was the key to the identity of Jesus' followers, not just an incidental or accidental quirk of history. The first followers of Jesus were deeply committed to not answering evil with evil, not retaliating when they were harassed, not giving into the trolls of their world, and not being baited into hatred--and they did this, not as a random fluke, but because they understood it was at the core of Jesus' own identity. Like the team I grew up rooting for, the early Christians formed their identity around the person of their founder and leader--Jesus himself. And because their namesake, Jesus the Christ, had not only taught them not to return evil for evil, but had shown it to them as well in his own trial and torture by the empire, the early church made this into their own identity as well. The Browns took their name, not from a color chosen at random, but from the name of their founding coach who led them to early victories.  And the early church took its cues about refusing to answer evil with evil, not by accident, but directly from the way of Jesus himself, the one who had first called them and who won THE victory over the powers of death and evil through his suffering love.  That was Jesus' way... and so it became the way of life for the followers of Jesus.

The question, perhaps for us, all these centuries later, is whether we dare to let the way of Jesus still be central to our own identity even now. It is terribly easy to get baited into hating people... or feeling like you have to get the "last word" in some petty internet argument... or to be suckered into somebody else's bitterness because they were spoiling for a fight and just like to stir the pot. Lots of folks do all those things... lots of folks who claim in front of the world that they are followers of Jesus, too (by their cross-marked ball caps, religiously themed bumper stickers, and social media profile photos)... but our actions and attitudes reveal something different. We so easily want to keep the name "Christian" without actually living out the legacy of the "Christ" for whom we are named. We so easily want to lash back out at the people we have been taught to think have aggrieved us, when maybe the problem is our own insecurity, rather than actual persecution. (Not to push the metaphor too far, but there was a time in Browns history when the team literally sold out and moved to another city, and the franchise changed its name and let go of the old connection to the man Paul Brown--and sometimes we Christians have done the same, too.)

This is a moment, then, to reclaim the legacy that's been given to us. At the core of Jesus' being was his commitment to answer hatred with love, evil with good, violence with endurance, and rottenness with truthfulness and justice. That wasn't just a random trait of his, but central to Jesus' understanding that God's love doesn't ultimately answer evil with more evil, and that God's love includes even those who have made themselves enemies of God. For us, then, who want to be on Jesus' team, we are called to walk in that legacy--not simply to wear Jesus' name casually, but to let his identity shape our own.

There was a time when anybody who saw the Cleveland football team, heard them on the radio, or even caught a mention of them in the paper would be led to think about their founder and namesake, Paul Brown himself. Well, maybe today is a day for people to see a connection between Christ Jesus and us, we who bear the name "Christian," in the ways we love. We don't have to be the ones known for picking fights on social media. We don't have to be known for bigotry against anybody who is different. We don't have to be known for have such insecurity issues that we feel we have to fight back every time we feel slighted. No, all those can be left behind or pitched into the dumpster. We are called to be people whose very lives point to Jesus--so that people will see us, and catch a glimpse of our source, our guide, and our namesake, Jesus the Christ.

Lord Jesus, let your way of loving even your enemies become our way--let it become our hallmark in the world.