So, what’s on my mind?
I recently came across an article about things that are named after people. I found it fascinating. There are apparently all kinds of everyday words and things that we use without ever stopping to think about where they came from.
Take German chocolate cake, for example. You might assume it originated in Germany. Nope. It was named after Samuel German, an American baker who developed a type of sweet baking chocolate. Or take the word dunce. It comes from John Duns Scotus, a medieval theologian whose followers were mocked as being overly rigid or slow-witted. And then there’s the gardenia, named after Alexander Garden, a Scottish-born American botanist. Even those wonderfully old-fashioned garments we call “bloomers” were named after Amelia Bloomer, who advocated for women’s dress reform. Who knew there were so many people hiding inside our vocabulary?
The more I thought about it, I realized that the Bible has its own collection of people whose names have become part of everyday language. If someone betrays a friend, we call them a Judas. If someone describes a woman as manipulative, immoral, or destructive, they might call her a Jezebel. If someone does something particularly courageous or self-sacrificing for a stranger, we call them a Good Samaritan.
We can turn people into labels remarkably quickly. But Jesus had a different way of looking at people. Jesus saw people as more than the worst thing they had done, more than the mistake they had made, more than the reputation they had acquired, and more than the label other people had given them.
That’s one reason I find the story of Peter so encouraging. Peter denied Jesus three times. If anyone could’ve been permanently defined by one terrible moment, it would have been Peter. But Jesus didn’t write Peter off. After the resurrection, Jesus sought him out, restored him, and gave him a new opportunity to serve. Peter’s story reminds us that our worst moment doesn’t have to be the final word.
So, the next time you hear someone described as a “Judas” or a “Jezebel,” take a moment to remember that you’re talking about a real person whose name belongs to a real story, and that every person is more complicated than the label we give them. And the next time you eat a piece of German chocolate cake, you can impress your friends by telling them that Samuel German is hiding in your dessert.
May God hold you,
Rev Chris Hester
