There is something reassuring about being called by your own name. And just so, for most of us there is something equally off-putting about being called by the wrong name. Can you remember a time when someone was convinced that your name was not the one the rest of us call you, and they kept on using it? Some people have unusual stamina for putting up with such annoyance. In the fall of last year, a relatively unknown pitcher surprised fans of the Los Angeles Angels by throwing a one-hitter victory against the fairly-deep batting bench of the Seattle Mariners. Sports reporters scrambled to get details on this 29 year-old, and were told that his name was Jerome Williams - but that when he’d played for the Giants, he’d been known as Jeremy Williams. Although his name was plainly spelled “Jerome,” somehow, New York had taken to calling him “Jeremy,” and done it for two years. When asked by a reporter why he’d answered to the wrong name for so long, Jerome replied meekly “Well, I just rolled with it. I was a rookie and I didn’t want to tell anybody, ‘cause I was scared!”

Jerome’s meek and humble nature aside, even when it’s unintentional, most people feel embarrassed for the sake of a name fumbler, and maybe even a little annoyed, as in, “Am I not important enough for you remember my name?” Contrast this with the intimate familiarity presented poetically in Psalm 139. The Creator who knit us together in the depths of our mothers’ wombs, the Provider who has established our days and knows the sweep of them, the Lord has searched us and knows us. Beyond our closest friend, beyond even a companion for life, our Lord knows every word before it forms on our tongue. If that is not knowing us on a first-name basis, I don’t know what is.

But in all honesty, can we say we know God’s mind the way God seems to know us? Truth be told, neither we, nor our grandparents, nor the ancients have always felt that we have the same intimate knowledge of Almighty God. When we speak about God we use words like immortal, invisible, indescribable, saying something about what God is not. But what is God really like? As a species we’ve wondered that since our beginning, since The Beginning. Many years ago, a Cub Scout once told me with an air of authority what God is like: God wears his cap backwards and rides around on something called a Nash Executioner (I asked, and that’s a skateboard). But exactly Who made who, and in Whose image? That Cub Scout is not the only one to perform an ‘extreme makeover’ on his Creator. Some claim a god who sanctions their violent little agendas, their plots for holy war, jihad or apocalypse. Others would buttress their beliefs about the abuse or oppression of women or children or minorities, waving the banner of some tribal god. But how do we call on God’s name, we who love God, but do not claim to know every thought, every word that comes to the Divine Mind? How do we know when we say God, we’ve got the name right?

In the First Chapter of the Gospel of John we find the story of how Jesus gathered those who would be his closest companions, the ones with whom he would share his bread (which is what the word companion means), and one day the bread of his broken and beautiful life. We might think that as in the other Gospels, John would show us some young men who just drop their nets and follow Jesus with what seems to be inspired comprehension. He is, after all, Jesus. There’s just something about that name…who doesn’t know that name?

But to the alert reader, John tells quite another story. In fact, Jesus gets a lot of names in our reading this morning. John the Baptist, on seeing Jesus, twice calls him the Lamb of God. We think this signals John’s insight into Jesus’ atoning death for the sins of the world. Maybe. But the Pascal Lamb, if John had that in mind, does not die for the sins of the people - it is a symbol of the Passover, by which God struck the Egyptians and freed the Hebrews from oppression. Elsewhere we learn that John the Baptist will later express doubt that Jesus is fulfilling what John had in mind for him. Just who or what John understands Jesus to be – a sacrifice, a hero, or a rebel - is hard to say. But one thing John does know: the One he has waited for has come, and he points the first disciples toward him.

As soon as Andrew and his anonymous friend approach the Lamb of God, Jesus gets another name: Rabbi. The two men have been sitting at the feet of a desert preacher. They rightly take Jesus to be another teacher - maybe even a greater one. Asked by Jesus what they seek, they reveal their answer: we want a teacher – so where are you staying? Andrew will reveal still another name for Jesus when he locates his brother Simon, to whom Jesus will give the nickname Cephas, Rocky. Andrew calls Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed One, sent by God to redeem Israel and right all her wrongs and sufferings. Andrew is right to bestow this title on Jesus, even though as yet he has no idea what shape Jesus’ servant-messiahship will take.

The very next day, if you are keeping score, another recruit gives Jesus a fourth title: “the One about whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote.” That’s not real catchy but it’s accurate, just the same. Philip, who said this, probably should have quit while he was ahead, because his next stab at a title is “Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth.” That line should make us post-Christmas worshippers chuckle: “Jesus, the Son of Joseph.” Really? Philip is delighted to have found a local boy making front-page news. He just doesn’t have his facts straight.

Ironically, it is Nathaniel, the one who doesn’t expect anything good to come from a local boy, who has the most penetrating insight into Jesus’ true identity to date: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Three names. Yet even this confession is tempered by Jesus, who gently asks if Nathaniel could make a guess like this on the basis of a tiny miracle. “You (and here the Greek text reads ‘y’all’) will see greater things than these.”

We often feel that faith must have been easy for those who actually got to meet Jesus in the flesh. We treat the characters of the Bible as if they were just that: literary devices, walk-ons to give Jesus a target for a parable or a miracle. But here we see something remarkable happening. Again and again, people come to Jesus seeking very different things: a hero who will free them, a teacher who will enlighten them, a fulfillment of their religious traditions, a friend who is much like them, a messenger come from God. Not one of these needs that each person has for Jesus is the whole picture, but Jesus does not turn any of them away. He doesn’t even correct them. He simply invites them to come and see.

You see, Jesus is a hero, a teacher, the fulfillment of Scripture, the Messiah, the Son of God. He is not Joseph’s biologic son, but he is Mary’s son, and is very much a man of the people. Jesus seems to understand that everyone who comes to him lacks a full understanding of his mission and purpose. He knows that we are all seeking something different: one of us is lonely, and seeking a companion. One of us is sick, and seeking healing. Another among us survived a nightmare of a family, and is seeking a very different kind of healing. And many of us come to Jesus seeking purpose, tired of running furiously to support a standard of living or a dream that has brought us to no meaning or lasting satisfaction, but only more hunger. Jesus is courage for the meek, he is treasure to the poor, a place to rest for the elderly, a friend who always listens for the insecure, a champion for the defenseless, a brother to the disinherited.

He is all these things. Oh, and one other thing. He is alive. Jesus, the name above all names, is not someone we learn about to become a Christian, the way we might learn about John Wesley in becoming a Methodist, or George Washington to become a naturalized citizen. Jesus is, in a way that is hard to explain but is unmistakable when experienced, alive, and therefore a person whom you meet and come to know. He still asks, “What do you seek?,” even though he knows what each of us aches for. And still he offers the invitation, “Come and see.”

As we begin this new year, anticipating the chance to explore the designs and dreams for new and expanded ministry space here at St. Mark’s, John calls us to keep the main thing, the main thing. Who we are is this: we’re people coming to know Jesus better, who go out and invite other people to come and meet him. Just as Andrew did for Peter, as Philip did for Nathaniel, we are to make invitation the cornerstone of our proclamation. We don’t know all that our neighbors need. I don’t know that about you. You don’t know that about me. But we know that there is One who knows, and this is the community where we come to know him.

And when he is known, when he begins to abide in each of us and we in him, then Jesus does the real work: he restores our relationship to the immortal, invisible God. Jesus makes God approachable, and offers to us for the first time what neither Moses nor Mohammed nor anyone else ever has or will do: he gives us a name to call God - Our Father. Perhaps this is why, when Jesus finally introduced himself, he said that we would “see heaven opened and the messengers of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Because in him, we discover for the first time what God is really like. Jesus is God’s face, the face that has searched us and known us. For you and for me, Jesus is God’s “Come and see.”

Perhaps you would like to know God in so intimate and personal a way. Perhaps you have heard about this, but would like to experience it yourself. If so, would you pray with me?