I have a new name this election season. My name is “Exhausted.” My middle name is “So-ready-for-peace.” But others have sharper names for me and likely for you too. You know these names because they’ve been flung about all the dark days of the past weary year. The names are inserted into sentences like these:

“They are pure evil.”

 “Those _______! They manipulate everything--- even the weather!”

 “I’ll take up arms if I have to. I’ll fight those ___________.”

 “They’re brainwashed. How can those ________ believe what they believe?”

 “How can they call themselves __________?”

 “They’re all flaming ________________ who will destroy the country.”

 “They’re the enemy!”

When I first heard these kinds of words two elections ago, even in church, I thought people were describing zombies or aliens or genocidal empires, but it turns out these names are now given to you, to me, and to our next door neighbors, the school bus driver, your daughter’s 6th grade teacher, the elder in your church, the mayor of your small town. Apparently, if we listen too hard, we’re all now the enemies of everybody else.

Historically we humans are not very good at naming one another, which often resulted in swords, guns and bloodshed. But Jesus is.

A woman caught in adultery: they named her Deserving-of-Death. Jesus called her --Forgiven.

 A tax collector, Matthew, labeled a traitor----Jesus named him Disciple and Friend.

 Lepers were called “unclean”: Jesus called them Healed.

 A zealot, a violent revolutionary Rome wanted to kill----he called Brother.

 A Samaritan woman, disvalued by her ethnicity and her gender---Jesus renamed Worthy.

 An uneducated fisherman from the boondocks--- Jesus made a leader and renamed him Peter, the Rock.

Even at the end, Jesus didn’t stop.  On that bloody tree, with his last few breaths, he changed the name of the man dying  next to him---from Rebel to Redeemed

To everyone who follows him, he gives a new name, a new identity. Listen!

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God;

You are the salt of the earth, the light of the world.

You are loved, chosen and adopted as his sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to be holy and pure.

 You are rescued from the kingdom of darkness, brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves.

 You are citizens of heaven, his ambassador’s here, called out “to the praise of His glory.”  

You are the temple of the holy spirit, the pleasing aroma of Christ.

 You are the sheep of his pasture, the apple of your Father’s eye.

 You are his sons and daughters, in whom he takes delight.

Through the long march of human history, no matter who was in power, no matter the form of government, those names and identities have never changed.

 Nor has the calling that comes with it. That night in the garden, Jesus took the sword out of Peter’s hand and charged him instead to “Feed My Lambs.”

Dear friends, whoever wins this election, no matter what chaos ensues----don’t change your name. Let go the sword, rejoice, walk in light and love for your neighbor, and “Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep.”

(I hope I’ve done that here. Thank you for sharing this space with me.)