HOW TO MAKE A NAME FOR YOURSELF

by

Eldridge E. Fleming, Ph.D.

New Hope Presbyterian Church

Rienzi, Mississippi

January 30, 2000

Our Old Testament reading this morning is from Deuteronomy, the eighteenth chapter, beginning at verse fifteen. It is a passage that shows you the connection between the coming of Jesus and Moses as he is talking to the people of Israel after his life, basically. Deuteronomy, according to tradition was dictated more or less by Moses, but now, lots of scholars say that is not true. But the way it is presented is as the dictation of Moses. In this particular passage, he is, of course, as he does on many occasions, telling us what the Lord has told him.

The reading from the Epistle comes from I Corinthians, the eighth chapter, verses one through thirteen. I will share with you, as I did with the folks at Booneville, that I am a little puzzled at this particular passage being in the lectionary. If you can figure it out, maybe you can tell me why it was selected. Now 2 Corinthians, the first thirteen verses, would make more sense to me, but I am just a peon in this business -- the scholars do that sort of thing -- but 2 Corinthians 8:1-13 ends in the middle of a sentence so that doesn't make sense either. Just bear with me now and listen for I am not going to use this as my text this morning, but I want you to hear it.

The gospel reading is from Mark, the first chapter, verses twenty-one through twenty-eight. Would you stand with me as we hear the gospel?

The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

This is Super Bowl Sunday. Atlanta is not "Hot-lanta," it is "Cold-lanta" today. We checked as we were coming up this morning and the temperature outside is 32 degrees. It's cool. But there are a lot of people who are in Atlanta, and others who were trying to get there but haven't made it. Maybe they will make it in time for the famous game this afternoon.

It is a day when many will be trying to make a name for themselves. One company, Computer.com, paid three million dollars for the ads that will be run on the air during the game. They are risking one-half of their total assets to build a name on a one-shot game. One of the owners did a similar thing last year when he also put up high states, high risks, and started Monster.com -- and he said it has paid off well. The new company, Computer.com, six months old, will try to make a name for itself this afternoon, this evening. With all of the publicity surrounding it -- they've been on the Today Show and other shows and have been talked about all over this week -- they are trying to make a name for themselves.

We say in the political arena that name recognition is critical for success, and in our day and age you cannot be elected to political office on the state or national level without good, wide, name recognition. But name recognition alone is not good enough; it has to be a good name recognition. As surely as getting the name out is important, making the name live up to its reputation is also as critical. So whatever it is they are doing with the big advertising drive and the fabulous kinds of investment -- three million dollars for several ads in the period of time the game is on this afternoon -- they stake it all, they risk it all for that publicity, in the process of making a name.

How do we make a name for ourselves? How do we make a name in our community? How do we make a name in our world? As a church we are in the process of looking at the mission of the church. This afternoon at 1:30 we'll be meeting and all of you can be at ease -- they'll all be home in time to eat the popcorn and the pies when the game comes on. We're looking at Ephesians to try to see what God's vision of the church is in our day. How is that going to work out in the world? We know already, and I've shared with you last week, that there is a great change in our generation. We're back to where we were two thousand years ago, spreading the gospel to a people who have a smattering of understanding and no depth. We're out evangelizing in the world, telling about that evangel who came to save the world -- including you and me. How do we, as a church, build a name for ourselves?

We're going to be looking at a mission statement, a vision of a mission statement, a name that in twenty words or less will say what it is that we're about. Oh, we could say that we're the congregation of God, receiving God's people in the 20th century. I don't know, can you say that loud and believe it? Well, this afternoon we'll struggle with it, but I want this morning to think some more about building a name. I want us to look at this passage of scripture that I read from Mark, and study it some in-depth -- studying the Bible, studying this to find out interesting things about how to make a name.

Let's look first at that passage and what we find is that the first thing after Jesus had selected four men to go with him around the sea near to Capernaum -- but not in Capernaum necessarily -- he moved his location from Nazareth to Capernaum. Why did he do that? Why would you go away from your hometown? Why would you go somewhere else? Jesus is the one who grew up in Nazareth and it was there that people knew him. It was there that he came to fulfill and to say to them, "This day Isaiah's prophecy about me is being fulfilled. God has sent you His son as a suffering servant," and they wanted to kill him. They rejected him; they rejected him in his own town and he had to find another base of operations.

So he took these disciples gathered from over and he went to Capernaum. He began selecting people from within that area to help him, and those first four were some people. Andrew first, then Simon Peter, then James and John. Oh, man, James and John had a rowdy kind of father. He was called Thunder. He was so bad, or good -- however you want to say it -- at being himself that he had a reputation. Jesus took those two boys along with two others and that was the first cadre, and they began to build a following, a discipleship crew.

Jesus, you know, practiced those habits that put him in the religious community. The scriptures tell us that when he went to Capernaum with these other disciples, they went to the synagogue. That was his habit. That was his practice. He had learned this as a little boy and as that practice continued now as the evangel that he was, he came and he went to the synagogue. He had developed those practices early on and he stayed with them. And you and I, we need to do the same thing; we need to develop those practices and stay with them. Those practices put him in the middle of the religious community at the synagogue. No doubt, also, he had learned in that process how to make contacts with leadership in that religious community, because when the five of them came in that morning into the synagogue, he was asked to say some things, and the scriptures tell us that he taught in the synagogue. He developed contacts knowing how to get in to speak and he was given that privilege.

But he set up his headquarters in Capernaum, not in Nazareth, and it so sad that sometimes we grow up -- as we say -- the brightest and the best of the minds of our people and our young people and then they have to move away from home to find a place to operate. So many of us know that. We've experienced it in this church. We've grown, developed bright people and they have to go somewhere else to ply their trade, to do their thing. So it is necessary sometimes to move to a different location. Hopefully, we don't reject them like they did in Nazareth when Jesus spoke. We don't threaten to kill them if they come back here, but we have to move sometimes.

The second thing we've learned about the building of a name for ourselves is the fact that when Jesus was teaching in the synagogue, he was interrupted. He was interrupted by what we would call a madman. In Jesus' day, they said this man had an unclean spirit; that's the way Mark put it. Unclean spirit. He didn't have a good positive spirit; he had a negative spirit. He had an evil spirit, a dirty spirit, however you want to put it. Mark said it was unclean. And right in the middle of Jesus' teaching, the man stands up and shouts out to him, "What have you to do with us?" I don't know what Jesus was preaching on, teaching on. It might have been most any point of the scriptures or anything related to them, and this guy interrupts him to say, "What do you have to do with us? Why are you talking to us? Have you come to destroy us?" Obviously Jesus had made a point that freaked him. He'd made some point that was powerful and so the man wanted to know if Jesus planned to destroy them.

You know, we say he was "a mad man, a man with an unclean spirit," but there was more insight in the evil that was within him than he was even aware. You see, that which Jesus was teaching, that which Jesus was preaching would one day cause him to lose his life for it. Indeed, he would be destroyed for that which he was teaching. But Jesus confronted the man. He said to him, "You are the holy one of God." No one else in the crowd saw that. But this man -- twisted as he might be, unclean as he was, demon possessed as he was -- could understand what Jesus was about.

Now notice what happened. Jesus attacked the common problem. That is the third thing to remember about building a name. You have to attack a common problem, one that is understood by those that surround you. What were the common problems that Jesus attacked? First of all, he attacked this demon possession. He talked back to him; he confronted him. He stopped him. Right there, he called that unclean spirit out of him. Look what he said to him. "Jesus rebuked him saying, 'Shut up! And come out of him!'" That is Fleming's translation. Mark just says that Jesus said to him, "Be silent." The common vernacular, though, is "Shut up!" and it came out of him. This man, who was confronting Jesus, all of a sudden was overwhelmed with a confrontation from Jesus himself. And when Jesus demanded that he shut up and that the spirit come out of him, the spirit did -- only after, though, it had convulsed him. The man had a seizure, a seizure in the synagogue, left limp on the floor, but then he stood up -- free -- and the madness was gone. Jesus cleaned him.

You know, you and I have seen that. We even use those terms while talking about people. We say today about people who are going along doing okay and then, all of a sudden, they do something that's out of order. We say, "Wonder what got into him -- or her?" Mark says that a demon got into him, an unclean spirit got into him, and Jesus exorcized that and got the spirit out. Now if we had read on through the rest of that chapter in Mark we would find that after this service was completed, after the man was silenced, presumedly Jesus went ahead with his teaching; and after the service was over, he went to Peter's house.

The next thing that Jesus had to confront was sickness. Jesus moved from dealing with the common problem of demon-possession -- madness in the mind -- to dealing with problems with the body. So he went next door to Peter's house. Martha and I were there, as you all know, in that synagogue. We looked at that. A beautiful place. And not far away, just a few yards, was a place that they called "Peter's house." Jesus went over to Peter's house and his mother-in-law was sick, so he exorcized her and told her to be well -- and she was. So Jesus attacked common problems and they were successful.

The next thing I want us to remember about this is that Jesus was well versed in the problem -- the problem with the demon possession, the unclean spirit. Jesus knew about that well. He had just returned from his forty-day struggle in the wilderness of Judea dealing with Satan and evil in all of its forms. However we want to put it -- whether it's allegorical or whatever you want to do with it -- the point is that Jesus spent those days dealing with the power of evil. All the temptations, we call it, the testing of his spirit. He had wrestled and won in the wilderness. But he wrestled and won in the wilderness because he knew the scriptures. He knew his Father's teachings, he knew how to use them; and because of that he was victorious. He knew when to quit being tolerant and when to confront. The man interrupted the service. He could have signaled for the guards and they would have taken the man out. He could have said to the ushers, "Help the brother out." But Jesus didn't do it that way, did he? He confronted him. All of us have to have -- need -- that spirit of discernment as to when to confront and when to back off. Sometimes we don't always know, but it's critical if we're going to build a name for ourselves as Christians and as servants of God, we have to have the Spirit's guidance. And that leads us to the next point.

Jesus was filled with the Spirit. God's Spirit was upon him. He was anointed with God's Spirit and that Spirit stayed with him from the baptism to the day he faced the man in the synagogue in Capernaum. He was filled with the Spirit, but that wasn't the end of it. He was not just filled, he maintained that spiritual reserve and those reserves were kept up. The full relationship with the Father was full and overflowing; so therefore, when he faced the man, he could say with all the authority of heaven and earth, "Shut up! And come out!" That power came from his spiritual being, from his fulness of the reservoir of his Holy Spirit. Jesus maintained that spiritual reserve and had the authority that goes with it.

But then, there's one other thing I want us to remember. As we build a name for ourselves -- make a name for ourselves -- if we're going to follow Jesus we have to believe in miracles. Yep, we have to believe in miracles. Things don't have to stay bad. Things don't have to stay disturbed. They don't have to stay disrupted. Jesus wasn't satisfied with the way the man was. On one occasion, you remember, when Jesus was talking to a crippled man he asked him a question. "Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to be made whole?" And the man said, "Yes." And Jesus commanded him to stand up and walk. He was, oh, an older fellow, a middle-aged fellow, who had never walked -- and Jesus said, "Stand up and walk." Jesus believed in miracles. And you and I believe in miracles, too.

There is a person that I have developed a friendship with over the years who was once a romance novelist -- nineteen romance novels published -- and she said as more of this fame spread, the filthier her mouth became. Some of you who work in professional circles know what I mean. But she said that on the day of her conversion, it was as though God took soap and water and washed her mouth and her mind and her spirit and her soul and cleansed all of that off, and she's never had any more problems with it since.

Do you believe in miracles? Jesus did. He believed in authority. He believed in God being able to do things. But when he spoke, he spoke with all the power of heaven and earth. And the man was changed. Think about it. Jesus had to change locations to do his ministry. He picked a common problem and he dealt with it. He was well versed in all of the scriptures and well versed with the problems. He was filled with the Spirit. God's Spirit was allowed by him to work within him. And then, he believed in miracles. So do you. And so do I.

Sometimes miracles occur and we do not notice them. Sometimes they are so blatant we cannot miss them. By faith we see them. Amen.