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The Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ: January 1 Years A B C

  • Numbers 6: 22-27

The Lord instructs Moses to relay to Aaron and his descendants the authority and the precise language for blessing God’s people: to bless and keep, show the Lord’s face and countenance and “give you peace.”  With this blessing, the (priestly) descendants of Aaron “shall put my name on” God’s people and God “will bless them.”

  • Psalm 8

The psalmist celebrates creation, which she finds infused with the Lord’s “name.”  When she considers humanity’s place in creation, she finds it “a little lower than gods/crowned with glory and grandeur.”  But, the Lord’s “name” is “over all.”

  • Galatians 4: 4-7

Paul works out the change in status of God’s people due to the “Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”  And now as God’s “children,” “the Spirit” permits/inspires us to call God by a new name, “Abba! Father!” And as God’s child, that bestows a new status for believers, “heir.’

  • OR Philippians 2: 5-11

One of the most fecund passages in all of Paul’s’ writings is most likely an extant hymn quoted by Paul.  The hymn exhorts believers to emulate Christ, who, “though he was in the form of God” did not rest in that status, but instead “emptied himself….”  The hymn invokes a well-defined and familiar status in the Classical world, that of a slave: he took “the form of a slave,” because he was “born in human likeness.”  This subservient status, which he took on voluntarily, put him in a position of humility and obedience, “To the point of death– even death on a cross.”  Now the hymn sweeps up in the exact opposite direction: “God highly exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name…”  This name is honored “in heaven and on earth….”  Hence, “every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

  • Luke 2: 15-21

Luke’s birth narrative continues by describing what happens after the shepherds had been told by “an angel of the Lord” the “good news” of the birth in Bethlehem of a Savior who is Messiah and Lord.”  They went into town, found Mary and Joseph and, in the manger, the newborn infant.  They told Mary and Joseph the announcement the angel had made to them and expressed their utter “amazement.”  The text is unclear exactly who is included, but just says that, “And all who heard it were amazed….”  Mary’s reaction to the reports from the shepherds in particular is noted in Luke’s narrative: she “treasured them” and kept them “in her heart.”  The shepherds depart the scene, singing and rejoicing for what they had “seen.”  Eight days later, as was the Jewish custom for a male newborn, it was time for the child to be circumcised and named; “he was named Jesus, the name given by the angel [to Mary, 1:31B] before he was conceived in the womb.”

Naming a child launches a life.  John Caputo writes: “A name is a promissory note what it cannot keep itself keep.”  “Names are asked to carry what they cannot bear towards a future they do not know.”  They may launch a lifetime, but names never capture a destiny; it must be lived out.  And the living into a name is something larger than the name itself; to use Captuo’s language, the lifetime is an “event.  “Names are trying to help make things happen, while events are what is happening.”  (The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event, p. 3 ff)  A name initiates a lifetime of deeds, memories, words, relationships that surpass the capacity of any particular name to contain,  It is the “event” of the life of the named person that never ceases having an impact whenever that name is invoked.  At birth, when the name is given, htere is all promise; the deeds and events of a lifetime fill in the meaning of a person’s name.

The name “Jesus,” given to Mary by an angel even before she conceived for the child she would bear, would have been a name of profound significance.  It is the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Yahshua” or “Joshua,” under whose leadership the Lord brought Israel into the promised land.  But it will be, of course, will do and say himself in his lifetime that will make his name into an “event.”  His total “obedience” even “to death on a cross” will release a display of love that evokes another name, “Messiah, Lord,” the Christ; and even the privileged, intimate name of “Son.”  All these names fuse in an “event,” a God-event.  Caputo continues: “The name of God occurs, not on the plane of being, but of the event; it is the name of a signification or an interpretation, not a substance.” (p. 181)  It is the “event” of all that Jesus said and did that persists and is invoked when his name is named and the story attached to that name is told.  It is the capacity of that name, as we look up at the figure on the cross, that raises our sights higher than ever before or since to the majesty of Gods love, which fills heaven and earth; ” a name above every other name,” that wondrously gives us a new name– “child” and “heir.”

God’s child in Christ adopted,– Christ my all–

What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply,

rather

That forfeit the blessed name, by which I call

The Holy One, the Almighty God, my Father?–

Father!  In Christ we live, and Christ in Thee–

Eternal Thou, and everlasting we.

From “My Baptismal Birthday,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge acknowledges a double miracle due to naming: we are through Chirst “God’s child adopted” which allows us to call “The Holy One” “father,”  

All are God’s children through creation.  The people of the Covenant  were given the first blessing.  Now, that identity can be more explicit and personal due to the new name given at baptism.  Gradually, the biblical texts provide more and more opportunities for every human being to identify themselves and all others as bearers of God’s identity.  For Christians, that universal identity is fulfilled in Jesus, the Christ.   “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons….”  Naming at baptism does not exclude, it includes.

 

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