NICKNAMES FOR JESUS [Su, 3-14-21]

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winte

[Just in case you are reading this early on Sunday morning, and you have not yet sprung your clocks forward one hour, I’ll remind you to do it.]

NICKNAMES FOR JESUS  [Su, 3-14-21]

 

Until eighth grade, I was pretty sure I was the smartest kid in our mid-year class, the one that started in January because we had winter birthdays, about 35 kids.

The other kids were smart, but I was always the first one to turn my test in. First-in with your test was the standard for “smartest.”

When we were in 8^th grade, the school board decided to end January starts to school. My mid-year class was folded back into the semester behind us to make a full year’s worth of students. I was suddenly in the same class as James Burch and Russell Riddle. I definitely was no longer the smartest kid in the class.

They not only got better grades than I, they even had better nicknames. James was “Wally,” for Wally Cox, who played “Mr. Peepers” on TV. With his burr haircut and big glasses, James looked a lot like Mr. Peepers. Russell was “Rowdy Russ,” or just “Rowdy,” precisely because he was the least rowdy kid in school, including the girls.

It was important to have a nickname, and I didn’t. Even during the phase when we started calling one another by the names of our fathers. [Who knows?] Darrel was Linus, and Bob was Kitty [yes, his father went by Kitty], and Jim was Curt, and the other Russell was Embry, and Don was Luther, on down the roll. I lost out on nicknames even in that phase. They might have called me by my father’s name, but I didn’t notice, for his name was John.

Now, you must remember that we were teen boys when I tell you that Darrel’s father’s name, Linus, was pronounced Lee-nus, which produced hallway questions of “Hey, Linus, how’s your male organ?” and, to Russell Green, “Hey, Greenie, how’s your hotdog?” Not exact quotes. The exact quotes rhymed.

Rhymes ran out on that organ fairly quickly, so we tried other organs. “Hey, Gene, how’s your spleen?” The whole thing faltered when nobody’s name rhymed with pancreas.

So, I was no longer the smartest, and I didn’t even have a nickname.

Nonetheless, Wally and Rowdy and I were the best of friends. I lost touch with them after high school, though. They went off to college to become engineers, Wally to Purdue and Rowdy to Evansville. They didn’t come to our every-five-years class reunions. No one knew where they were. Until Russell finally showed up, from New Mexico, at our 55-year reunion.

I greeted him with “Rowdy Russ!” His wife did not know about our nicknames. She asked, a bit angrily, “Why do you call him that?” Before I could explain, Russell, looking puzzled, said, rather piously, “In high school, I was so busy with studying and helping in my parents’ grocery, I didn’t have time to be rowdy.” It was one of the saddest times of my life. My good friend, and he had such a neat nickname, and he didn’t remember it.

We have nicknames because one name just isn’t enough to show us all the uniqueness that is each person. But we get into trouble when we turn a nickname into the only name, when we turn it into theology. [Or a body part.]

That’s when the nicknames for Jesus go wrong. They are great, as long as we remember they are just nicknames. Yes, Jesus is the lily of the valley, the sun of righteousness, the fairest of ten thousand, king of kings, alpha and omega, bread of life, good shepherd, and on and on. [1]

When you turn one nickname into a whole theological system, though, like “the sacrificial lamb,” and insist that it can make explicit the totality of the mystery which is Christ, “saved by the blood of the lamb,” [2] that’s a dead end, a primrose path, a blind alley, a cul-de-sac, a… well, you get the idea, the premise, the plan, the scheme, the…

John Robert McFarland

1] Bibleresoures.org lists 106 nicknames for Jesus from the KJV.

2] A man left one of my early churches because I did not say “the blood of the lamb” often enough in my preaching.