Mark 10:46-52 tells the story of the healing of Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar. It is a remarkable story, not so much because Jesus heals him but because the gospel names him. Most of Jesus healings are of anonymous people – a paralytic, a leper, a widow’s son. Few are named. There is Lazarus, whom we know was a close friend of Jesus’ and now there is Bartimaeus. He was not anonymous, he was someone special enough to be named. Verse 52 tells us Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way. Maybe this Bartimaeus became a follower of Jesus, someone that the writer of the gospel knew personally.
Names have power, they change the way we look at people and the way we relate to them. If we call a person by an anonymous term – refugee, feminist, homeless person, shop assistant, homosexual – we respond to them differently than if we call them by their given names. To address a person by name changes our relationship to them and changes the way we think about them.
What is your response?
Think about the people you have encountered this week. Make a list of those whose faces you remember but whose names you do not remember. Make a second list of those whose names you do remember. What was different about the people in your tow lists? What differences did it make to the way you responded to them?
Names change the way we look at Jesus too. To call Jesus the Christ, Lord, Saviour, Redeemer, conjures up different images than when we call him friend, shepherd, companion, brother, lover of my soul. The first list makes us think of a powerful God, distant, maybe even a little cold. The second list carries a sense of intimacy, and draw us into a close and personal relationship to God.
Names matter. If we see Jesus only as Lord it can imply a distant and unapproachable God who is unconcerned for human suffering. If we call him servant, we see him down in the dirty places of our world and we want to join him. If we call him companion, brother or lover of our souls, it implies a much more intimate relationship to him.
Our first encounters with Jesus are often with the powerful Lord and Saviour whose life death and resurrection has transformed our lives. We need to know the names that inspire us to act as God’s representatives in a needy world. But we also need to know Jesus by these more intimate names which are essential for us to grow into the love of God.
What is your response
Write down all the names you can think of that are applied to Jesus in the scriptures. Which of these do you use most frequently? What do you think this says about your relationship to Jesus? Sit quietly in the presence of God, listen to the song below. Are there new names that God is prompting you to consider using for Jesus?