The Holy Name (January 1)

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The Holy Name

Homily given at 12 noon Healing Mass

Trinity Parish Church, Ashland Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

    Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7 or Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-2; Psalm 8

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

January 1 is the Feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  Once called the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, the Feast of the Holy Name it commemorates the events recounted in today’s Gospel.   The principal idea is that just as Jesus was marked as part of God’s chosen people by circumcision, and just as he was marked as salvation for us by the angel prescribing his name, so Christ marks us as his own and gives us his name when we are baptized.  Thus the selection of the other readings.

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… [O] n 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… 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.  

I once had a student ask me, in all innocence, “If Jesus was a Jew, how come he had a Puerto Rican name?” 

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, as my student astutely observed) 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 worship.  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.  

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 name of Jesus is thus a call for help, understood as an assurance of salvation. 

Jesus was an extremely common name in Palestine during this time period. But it tells us much about the historical character who bore it.  Yeshua‘ was a nationalist name: Joshua, the hero who followed Moses and brought the children of Israel into the Promised Land.   Jesus’ family have similarly 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, all named after great patriarchs from Israel’s past: Jacob, Joseph, Shimeon and Judah. 

Jesus’ family gave him this name, under angelic instructions or not, in part because it evoked hope for national salvation. 

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. 

In the name of Christ, Amen