Merry Christmas! It is still Christmas. Christmas is a season with twelve days that begins on Christmas Day, it does not end on Christmas Day. So you can keep celebrating, eating all that good food, singing Christmas carols, giving gifts. Today is the 8th day of Christmas, so your true love was supposed to give you eight maids a milking.
Today is also January 1st, which means I need to say Happy New Year. I hope this coming year, 2023, is full of blessing and joy and peace for you and all those you love, and for our parish at St. Mary’s. It is a big day: the 8th day of Christmas, New Year’s Day, and also the Feast of the Holy Name. There is much to celebrate on this day.
The Feast of the Holy Name is an interesting feast. There are two things that we are commemorating on this day. The first thing we are commemorating is an event. The action, the event, of taking Jesus after eight days and circumcising him and giving him the name of Jesus. This Feast is based on one verse in Scripture, and in many ways we could overlook this. It is something of a foregone conclusion because the angel had already said that his name would be Jesus. And yet, I think there is something more going in this event, because Mary and Joseph have the opportunity to take the name that the angel said and give it to Jesus. They have the opportunity to participate in what God is doing in this world. In the same way when the angel announced to Mary all that was to take place, Mary had to consent, had to say yes to God by saying, Let it be according to Thy word. Here again she has the opportunity to confirm her involvement in what God is doing in Jesus. God doesn’t just act in this world, but invites people to act. So it might be a foregone conclusion, but perhaps Mary could have done something else. She might have named him Joseph, another possible name. But she didn’t. She picked the name that the angel told her. She confirmed her involvement in what God was doing.
The second thing we are commemorating on this day is an idea, a concept about names. When you make a Feast Day for a name, it suggests that names matter. “What’s in a name”, Juliet said from the balcony. “That which we call a rose by any other name would be as sweet,” suggesting that names do not matter. But of course the rest of Shakespeare’s play reminds us that names very much do matter, with rather tragic consequences sometimes when we ignore the importance and the power of a name.
The religious spiritual writer Frederick Buechner, who died this year, has a lovely reflection on names. He begins by talking about his own name, which gets mispronounced a lot. He says that whenever somebody mispronounces his name in a foolish way, he feels that it is he, himself, who is foolish. He says that when someone forgets his name, he feels that it is he, himself, that has been forgotten. Names are important. Names matter. Names have power.
I think he overstated the case somewhat, and that’s partly because I am terrible at remembering names. I promise you, I have not forgotten you when I have forgotten your name. I have a lot of names to learn, and I am not very good at it. I wasn’t good in biology class, either, when I had to name all the parts of the cell. Remembering that sort of thing is not a particular gift that I have.
Now I have one of those weird names that people mispronounce and misspell all the time. I had an experience recently that made me think Buechner is on to something. Although I’ve never felt like someone has forgotten me when they don’t remember my name, or that I’m foolish when they foolishly mispronounce or misspell my name, I had the exception that proved the rule a few weeks ago. I was at a coffee shop, and for someone with a weird name, there is a moment of dread every time I make my order, because they ask at the end, and what is your name? I say, Bingham, and they have a flinching moment and sometimes ask, Huh? Sometimes they ask, Can you say that again, or Can you spell that for me, or sometimes they pause and go for it: Benjamin, Bingo was a fun one, Bigam is a spelling I sometimes see on the cup. But I had this moment a few weeks ago when I said Bingham, and there was no flinch. There was no follow up question, and I had a really strange feeling of being known. Does this person know me? In that moment I had to see the receipt to see if they spelled it right. I asked for the receipt, and there it was, spelled the way I spell it, spelled correctly. There was a lightness that stayed with me for hours that the barista knew me because they got my name right. For the first time, I understood what Buechner meant. Maybe my name had just been so mangled over the years that I had gotten used to it. But I felt how powerful it is to be known by your name and having it right.
I know people who have changed their name when they got married and then years later changed it back because it didn’t really fit. I know people who have changed their name to a name they selected. And in doing so, for the first time in their life they felt that they were who they were. There was something that was off in the name that had been given to them at birth. And by selecting the name they had always felt was their real name, they were finally themselves.
Names are important. Names matter. The name of Jesus matters. Why does it matter? There are a couple of things. One is that the name Jesus is an English translation, but it is not the only way we translate that word. The other way is Joshua. The Hebrew name that Jesus had was Yeshua, the same name that Joshua had, the successor to Moses. There is something very deliberate in giving them the same name. The successor to Moses is the one who leads the people into the Promised Land, into their new homes. And Jesus is the one who leads us, shepherds us into the Promised Land. The one who proclaims the Kingdom of God, the reign of God in this world and tells us it is near, that it is among us, that it is within us, and leading us to live in that Kingdom, just as Joshua was leading the people into that Promised Land. There is a deliberate connection in choosing that name.
The second thing about Jesus’s name that is so important is what the name Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus means, which is God saves. In Jesus’s name we are seeing what it is that God is doing in him. In Jesus we have the Incarnation of God and God’s salvific work in this world which is proclaimed to us in his very name. He is stamped with this work that will be his life and his death and his resurrection, which is the work of salvation, the work of liberation, the work of bringing people up from all the misery they are experiencing. Every time that Jesus heals someone, or feeds someone, he is living into that name that has been planted within him. God saves. God frees. God liberates.
On this Feast of the Holy Name, we are remembering this event. We are remembering the way Mary was invited to participate in what God was doing, and remembering that God is inviting us to participate in that work. We are remembering this name, we are offering our gratitude, our thanks, our praise for the work of salvation that God is doing in our lives, bringing people up from the misery they experience. In that name we find the embodiment that Isaiah has been telling us throughout Advent about the peaceable Kingdom, the swords being transformed into plowshares, hills being brought down and valleys lifted up. We are hearing, in Jesus’s very name, and celebrating all that God is doing in our lives.
So, my friends, celebrate this name. Celebrate the work that God is doing in your life, and offer your praise.
AMEN
