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"The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. And we saw his glory, the glory that he has from the Father as the only son of the Father, full of grace and truth." Nothing separates the faith of the Christian from other faiths more than this astonishing assertion. This affirmation marks the primary difference between Christian and Jew. In so many ways, the faith of the Christian and the faith of the Jew are the same: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One." Like our Jewish brothers and sisters we were there, along with Moses and the people of Israel, that wonderful night long ago when God delivered us from bondage in Egypt and brought us into the land of promise, the night of that pivotal event in our spiritual journey which we remember, and for which we give thanks. Christians, like Jews, and like Muslims as well, are the children of Abraham. But at a specific place and time along the way of our subsequent pilgrimage, we have seen something, we believe, that not even Moses and Abraham were privileged to see, and that many of the children of Abraham and Moses still do not see. We believe we have seen the face of God. This is the striking affirmation of the Christian that sets us apart from all other people of faith - that the very Word of God, which was with God in the beginning, became as one of us and lived among us at a particular place and time. You remember, I know, back there at Sinai, after we had disobeyed God and made a different god for ourselves, a god of gold that we could see and touch - you remember how Moses addressed God, and said, "Lord, you tell me to lead the people into freedom, but you have not told me who you are going to send with me so that the people will follow," And we remember how the Lord said to Moses, "Moses, I myself shall go with you." And we remember how Moses said, "Then please, Lord, show me your glory," and how the Lord then said, "Moses, you are mine, and I know you by name, but my face, my glory, you cannot see, for no human being can see me and live." But then, some 1,200 years later, God did show us his face. He showed us his glory and gave us his name. This is the faith of the Christian - that when the time had fully come, the very Word who is God, and who was with God in the beginning, and through whom all things came into being, this very Word, Logos, Reason, and Purpose of all things, the very foundation of creation and life itself, became flesh and blood, born of the Spirit and of a woman named Mary, at a particular place called Bethlehem, in Judea. And "on the eighth day," Luke tells us, "when the time came to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived." So it's on this particular day, the eighth day after our celebration of his birth, the day on which he was circumcised according to the Law, that we commemorate and explore the meaning of the naming of Jesus. It was, you know, an ordinary name. According to the historian Josephus, so many men in Judea in those days bore the name "Jesus" that it lacked any individuality at all. "Jesus" was a name that belonged to thousands of other men who had to work and sweat for their daily bread, just as the name "Jesus" belongs to thousands of men to this day in Latin American countries. On the surface, it hardly seems that it should be a name at which "every knee should bow and every tongue confess." What is a name, anyway? In one sense, we sometimes think, a name is just another word. And yet a name has a way of summing up the whole of a person's personality. In the Scriptures, in fact, it is thought that the name is the person, that when a name is invoked the power and presence of the person are somehow made real. I think that's right. Some of those old-timers knew what they were talking about. A name is much more than just a word, much more than a tag we just hang on one individual to distinguish him from another. Names carry power. Naming is literally an act of creation. When you name a child Margaret or Sarah or Penelope, it is literally Margaret or Sarah or Penelope, and not Bertha or Barbara, you create. Once named, only that name fits. No other name will do, unless, as with religious, one seeks to become another person. "Buechner," says Frederick Buechner. "It is my name. It is pronounced Beekner. If someone mispronounces it in some foolish way, I have the feeling that what's foolish is me. If somebody forgets my name, I feel that it is I who am forgotten. There's something about [my name] that embarrasses me in just the same way that there's something about me that embarrasses me. I can't imagine myself with any other name - Held, say, or Merrill, or Hlavacek. If my name were different, I would be different. When I tell somebody my name, I have given him a hold over me that he didn't have before. If he calls out, I stop, look, and listen whether I want to or not. "In the Book of Exodus," Buechner adds, "God tells Moses that his name is Yahweh and God hasn't had a peaceful moment since." (Wishful Thinking, p. 12) St. Luke says that on the eighth day the child born of the Spirit and of Mary "was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived." Luke is not simply saying that Mary and Joseph were obedient in naming their child according to the instruction of the angel. More importantly, he is saying that in this child the extraordinary, the very face and glory of God, is expressed and found through the ordinary, through ho-hum flesh and ho-hum blood. He is saying that salvation was born that particular day, to that particular woman, in that particular place, for "Jesus" is the Greek form of "Joshua," which means "The Lord is Salvation," or "It is the Lord who saves." Why, then, so many men in Judea with this particular name? Because it's like an American naming a child George Washington. Joshua was the George Washington of the people of Israel. It was Joshua who led the people into salvation, into the Promised Land, after their forty years in the wilderness. The name "Joshua" - "It is the Lord who saves" - commemorated an event and expressed a faith shared by all the people, and they named their sons Joshua to mark that event in their history and that faith in their lives. Then what is so different about this Joshua, this Jesus, the Jesus born of the Spirit and of Mary in a manger in Bethlehem in the days of Herod? What makes this Jesus different from the Jesus down the block, or the Jesus over on the next farm, or the Jesus in the other class at school? Perhaps it's the way this Jesus actually lived out the name the angel had given him before he was conceived, the way he actually lived what his name signified. The difference is that this Jesus, the particular one born of the Spirit and of Mary, knew that a name is the person and the person is the name - that Joshua, Jesus, is the one who delivers salvation, the one who leads into the Promised Land. And so, in his life and in his death, this Jesus actually shows us Joshua, the salvation of the Lord. Back in the Book of Numbers, the Lord spoke to Moses and said, "Moses, speak to Aaron the priest, and to his sons, and say: 'This, Aaron, is how you must bless the Israelites. You will say, "May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his face and bring you peace." This, Aaron, is how you must call down my name on all the people, and then I shall bless them,' says the Lord." And indeed! This is what the Jesus of Bethlehem, the particular one born of the Spirit and of Mary, did, in his person, in his life and in his death. This Jesus was priest to his people. He blessed the people of God. He showed the face of God to a people in distress. In Jesus' face, the face of the Lord shone upon them. In his person, the glory of God embraced them and gave them shalom, peace. This blessing is what Jesus gave when the leper implored him to make him clean. Jesus reached out and healed him by touching him. By touching the untouchable, by embracing in the name of God a child whom God's people had rejected, this Jesus showed him the face of God, and thereby blessed him. This blessing is what Jesus gave the woman at Simon's house when Simon the Pharisee rebuked him for allowing the sinful woman to wash his feet. Jesus said to her, "Woman, your sins are forgiven." By embracing the sinner, and forgiving her in the name of God, this Jesus gave her peace, shalom, the blessing of God. He healed her by showing her the face of a God who loved her, thereby creating yet another who loved much because she was forgiven much. This blessing is what Jesus gave when he died on the Cross. "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." From the Cross, Jesus shows us the face and glory of the love of God, granting us peace, forgiveness, thereby blessing us and leading us into that salvation that would forever be out of our reach, were it not for the face of love he shows? St. Augustine says that "the name of Christ is now on the lips of all." Well, that may have been true in Augustine's day, in the fourth century, before the days of American political correctness. These days we close the stores and banks on Christmas without so much as a nod toward Christ. We close them "in observance of the holiday season" so as not to offend someone by being specific, so as not to offend by actually mentioning the name of the one whose holy day we observe and by recalling the event in the history of salvation. It's almost as if everything these days, from medicines to holy days, has to be generic, without the taste or bite of the real thing. These days we even have "Presidents' Day," a generic day off that is a vestige of our former observance of the births of Washington and Lincoln, two specific presidents who did some important specific things in our history. But Presidents' Day now reminds us of nothing meaningful about the sacrifices and the wisdom those two particular men contributed to the cause of republican government or of liberty. Wishing someone a "happy holiday" at Christmas is, of course, in no way offensive. It's just that, like Presidents Day, it is utterly meaningless, inane, totally without significance. I fear that we have a fear these days of being specific, a fear of naming the day, a fear of recalling the person or event, and I fear that it's partly because we have a fear these days of being meaningful. So when I couldn't find Christmas postage stamps again this year, I bought "Hanukah" stamps instead, which at least means something specific. Unlike generic presidents and snow men, "Hanukah" points to a specific event, to a specific date on which something important happened, something we need to remember. God insists on being specific. The angel insists that the child be called Jesus. The Prayer Book insists that on this day, the eighth day, the Feast of The Holy Name will trump the generic First Sunday after Christmas Day, and we will commemorate his name. God insists on giving his people a personal face, the face of a particular man in a particular land at a particular time with a particular name, because God knows that a name has power. "In the Book of Exodus, God tells Moses his name is Yahweh and God hasn't had a peaceful moment since." And in the Gospel of Luke, the angel tells Mary that she is to name her son Jesus, and Jesus hasn't had a peaceful moment since. "Jesus" is a name with power beyond the power of all names. "The name of Christ is now on the lips of all," as Augustine said. These days, of course, the name of Christ is just as likely to be on someone's lips as a curse, rather than as a blessing. Significantly, however, that was just as true in Augustine's day as it is in ours, for Augustine goes on to add: "[The name of Christ] is invoked by the just man in the service of justice. [But Christ's name is also used] by the perjurer for the sake of deceiving, by the soldier to nerve himself for battle, [and] by the king to confirm his rule. All invoke the name of Christ - the faithful with true reverence, the pagan with feigned respect. And they shall all undoubtedly give to that same Person whose name they invoke an account both of the spirit and of the language with which they repeat his name." (Letter 232.4) So the question, in Augustine's day and in ours, is: How shall we use name of Christ? How will we invoke it? What account will we give to Christ of the spirit and the language with which we repeat his name? Will we use Christ's name like the king, to confirm our rule by quoting a few lines from Jesus to shore up our shaky authority, to buttress our arguments, to garner support for our side and ammunition for our war? Will we use Christ's name like the perjurer, swearing on a stack of Bibles, on pages and pages of Jesus' name, that what we say is true, in order to hide our deceit? Will we use the name of Jesus like a partisan, as a form of prejudice to exclude, as a way of saying that those who do not use his name the way we use it are beyond the reach of God's love? Or will we use the name of Jesus, will we invoke the power of his name, as Jesus himself lived and died his name - to show the face and blessing of God? Will we invoke his name to grant peace, embracing in the name of Christ the poor and the sick, the unwashed and the sinner, the lonely and the unwanted and the unloved, in order to bless them in the name of God? "This is how you must bless the people," says the Lord. "You will say, 'May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his face and bring you peace." Such blessing is the work of God's priests, his Church. Such blessing is the work and the power of the name "Jesus," and of all who carry that name. We believe that in Bethlehem and on Calvary we have seen something specific and meaningful that not even Moses was privileged to see. We have seen, in Jesus, the glory and face of God, the power of God, the very purpose and life of God. His name is Jesus, Salvation, Blessing, Peace, the name the angel gave him before he was conceived. And it is the name he has given you and me as well. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |