The Holy Name (Christmas 2B; Holy Name of Jesus)

Verdun Altar Piece, Circumciso Christi

The Holy Name

1 January 2012

Christmas 2B; Holy Name of Jesus

Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

10 AM Festival Holy Eucharist

Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21

 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. (Luke 2:15-21)

God, breathe into us a desire to change—
take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

It is wonderful finally to be here at Trinity Ashland.  Elena and I have been looking forward to this since October, and we want to thank the members of the search team, the transition team, the vestry, and the Trinity staff who have helped us move here from Beijing. 

Today is the Feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  Once called the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, it commemorates the events recounted in today’s Gospel, the circumcision and naming of the baby Jesus.  In recent years the Church has focused this feast on the naming rather than the ritual performed by a moyel, which was perhaps a bit too graphic for modern tastes of primarily gentile congregations. 

The principal idea of the Feast of the Holy Name is that just as Jesus was marked as part of God’s chosen people by the imposition of Abraham’s sign of the covenant, and just as he was marked as God’s agent for saving us by being given the name the angel had prescribed for him earlier, so Christ marks us as his own and gives us his name when we are baptized.  That’s why the other readings talk about God placing his name on his people, and of us having to follow Christ’s example of acceptance and humility. 

The importance of naming, and recognizing the right names for people and things is a key idea behind the Feast so re-conceived.  Myths of power established through naming are found in many cultures.  The Egyptian goddess Isis gains control over Ra only by discovering his true name.   In the Sumerian creation myth, the god Ea begins to create the heavens and the earth “before they had been given names.” In Genesis 1, God creates all the objects and frameworks of the universe through pronouncing their names.  In Genesis 2, Man establishes his dominion over the animals by naming them.

The fact is, we still place a great deal of stock in the process of naming.  Note the care that new parents usually take to ensure that they have chosen just the right name for the newborn.  Think of the difference between the two expressions “to name names,” and “to call names.”  We say “you are calling that person names” implies that what you are saying is not truly who or what that person is.  But if you are truly going to tell the truth and not varnish it one bit, you “name” names. 

The playwright and women's issues activist Eve Ensler, as part of the “This I Believe” Project, said the following: 

I believe in the power and mystery of naming things. Language has the capacity to transform …, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior and redirect our thinking. I believe in naming what's right in front of us because that is often what is most invisible.   . . . When I was finally able as an adult to sit with my mother and name the specific sexual and physical violence my father had perpetrated on me as a child, it was an impossible moment. It was the naming, the saying of what had actually happened in her presence that lifted my 20-year depression. By remaining silent, I had muted my experience, denied it, pushed it down. This had flattened my entire life. I believe it was this moment of naming that allowed both my mother and I to eventually face our deepest demons and deceptions and become free. …

Naming things, breaking through taboos and denial is the most dangerous, terrifying and crucial work. This has to happen in spite of political climates or coercions, in spite of careers being won or lost, in spite of the fear of being criticized, outcast or disliked. I believe freedom begins with naming things. Humanity is preserved by it.

What Ensler is talking is actually a central doctrine of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, the Rectification of Names. “Calling things by their right names is the beginning of wisdom” runs a Chinese proverb based on the idea (cf. Analects 12.11). The words we choose to call things are an important indication of what a society values, or what a society thinks it should value.   Anthropologists have said many times that the process of choosing names for things is one of the principal ways we impose order on perception.

I just finished 25 years of working as a spin doctor for the U.S. federal government.  I know all too well the power of the words you choose to call things, both to establish truth or to hide it.  Our military talks about “going kinetic.”  That means starting to move troops and weapons to actually kill people.  Our political leaders often talk about “preserving our way of life,” but what they usually mean by this is holding on to our possessions, our privilege, and our control of others.  The previous U.S. administration decided to use the words “enhanced interrogation techniques” to describe what previously had always been called “torture” and thereby justified a horrible departure from our best national values.   

  

Bulgarian novelist Elias Canetti, reflecting on the importance of honest use of language, wrote, “You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.” 

Given the centrality of Jesus to Christian faith and the importance of names, it is  natural that Christians have always reflected on the names our Lord Jesus should have. 

Note the magic and power of names in the following passage from Revelation 19:11-16,  where the seer John sees our Lord coming to set the world right:  

Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is named Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, "King of kings and Lord of lords.”

It is hard for most of us today to appreciate that Jesus of Nazareth did not stand out from his contemporaries simply because of his name “Jesus.”   The name is just too unusual for English speakers to think of anyone but our Lord when hearing it.  

The Greek word Iesous transliterates the Aramaic name Yeshua‘ (“Josh”) and the Hebrew name Yehoshua‘ (Joshua).  Out of reverence, Christians in general (except for Spanish speakers) have tended to not use the name “Jesus” to name their children.  Jews have preferred the Hebrew name “Joshua” to the shortened Greek-form “Jesus” since the latter had become associated with the object of Christian devotions.  But this was not the case at the time that Jesus lived. The Jewish historian Josephus mentions at least ten different people at the time who played historical roles that had the name. It was actually extremely common.

Both Matthew and Luke say that the name “Jesus” was given to the baby before his birth.  In Luke, the angel Gabriel during the annunciation tells the Blessed Virgin that she should name the baby Jesus (Luke 1:31), without giving any reason for the name.   Matthew, however, also gives a folk etymology for the name:  Gabriel says to Joseph, “[Mary] will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”  This play on words is a little bit like claiming that a man was named Bill because his mother knew he would be working in Accounts Receivable.   The folk etymology for Iesous was apparently popular, since the Hellenistic philosopher Philo of Alexandria also explains the Greek name Iesous as “salvation.” 

This explanation thinks that the name Jesus, Yeshua‘, is related to the verb “to save,” yasha‘.  But this folk etymology, however theologically satisfying it might be, is not correct.  Just as Bill is a shortened form of William, and has nothing to do with billing, Yeshua‘ is a shortened form of the Hebrew name Yeho-shua, or Joshua, and has nothing to do really with the verb “to save.” Yeho-shua combines the divine name of God, Yahweh, with the verb shawa‘, which means “help,” not “save.”   The original name Yeho-shua was the cry of a mother in labor—“Yahweh, HELP!” 

The fact is, Jesus was an extremely common name in Palestine during this time period. But we learn several things about the historical Jesus through his name. 

Though he came from a heavily gentile territory, Galilee, Jesus came from a somewhat pious and nationalistic Jewish family.  Yeshua‘ was a nationalist name: it brought to mind Joshua, the hero who followed Moses and brought the children of Israel into the Promised Land.   The people in Jesus’ family have similar nationalist names. Mary, his Mother, brings to mind Miriam the sister of Moses.  Joseph, his legal father, brings to mind the patriarch Joseph who saved the Israelites by providing refuge in Egypt. Matthew 13:55 mentions four brothers of Jesus:  James, Joses, Simeon, and Jude.  All are names of great patriarchs from Israel’s past: James has the Aramaic or Hebrew name Jacob, the original name of the Patriarch later known as Israel.  Joses is the Greek form of the name Joseph.  Simon and Jude are Greek names for brothers of Joseph, Shimeon and Judah. 

The name of Jesus is thus a call for help, understood as an assurance of salvation.  Jesus’ family gave it to him, under angelic instructions or not, in part because it evoked hope. 

We thus again return, as in most of our Christmastide readings, to the doctrine of incarnation:  God taking on human weakness and limitation, becoming (except for sin) fully human.   And this incarnation is not just individual and isolated, but, fully human as it is, is also social, communal, with hopes for social liberation and justice as well as for individuals being made right with God. 

“Yahweh, HELP!” we cry.  And we recount to each other the stories of God saving His people in the past, of mighty acts of love beyond measure, mercy passing thought. 

“Yahweh, HELP!” we cry.  And we find hope for being saved. 

“Yahweh, HELP!” we cry.  And to us a baby of promise is born, a child ensuring peace is given. 

I am truly thankful finally to be with you here in Ashland.  I pray that in the coming weeks and years we may find deeper and deeper community with each other and find it in that baby whose name is hope itself. 

In our prayer life and quiet time this week, let us reflect and meditate on the Holy Name of Jesus.  And let us be honest and open in our naming of names, and calling out the demons in our lives who parade under false names or no name at all. 

In the name of Christ, Amen