Naming

Available for 27 days

Spiritual reflection to start the day with Bryan Kerr, a Church of Scotland Minister in Kilmacolm, Inverclyde. Script: Good morning. A few years back, a young school pupil stopped me in a corridor and asked, "What's Jesus actually like?" Not who is he. What is he like. I remember standing there, as the school chaplain, trying to find an honest answer that wasn't a sermon. I think I said something about kindness, and about courage, and about not giving up on people. She smiled, and ran off to play. What's Jesus actually like? The American theologian Marcus Borg once wrote that Jesus, for Christians, is the clearest picture we have of what God is like, and of what a life filled with God actually looks like. I like that. Jesus takes the abstract and makes it visible. He makes it something we can name. We name what matters to us. We name the people we love. We give our children names with care, sometimes after grandparents, sometimes after places, sometimes just because the sound was right. Naming is how we say: this one is mine, this one belongs. For people of faith, naming Jesus does something similar. It says, this matters here. Not just on a Sunday. In how I speak to the person serving us. In how I treat the colleague nobody likes. In the choices I make when no one's watching. To name Jesus is to put a face on what we mean by grace, by kindness, by the stubborn refusal to give up on each other. You don't have to share my faith to recognise the principle. We become what we name. We grow into the words we use about ourselves and the people around us. The things we name shape the people we turn into. So perhaps the question that pupil asked me is one worth carrying into any day. What's the thing you name and love actually like, and how does it show in the way you live? God of every name, help us today to name what matters. Help us live what we name. Amen.