December 31, 2006
The Eve of the Feast of the Holy Name
Merry Christmas.
Or merry middle of Christmas. We still have a whole week more to celebrate.
We in the Church have to do our part to keep the Christmas season going, even as slightly worn tinseled trees begin to pile up at the curbs all around us.
From a preacher’s standpoint, Christmas isn’t long enough even with twelve days. There is just too much to cover in such a short time. Most years, we celebrate the first Sunday after Christmas, the Epiphany and the Baptism of our Lord. We never get around to the feast appointed for January first. This year, with Christmas on a Monday, this next Sunday was so close, that I kind of nudged the calendar a bit so we could celebrate the naming of Jesus today. We may not get to do that on a Sunday again for six years.
If you didn’t know there was a feast of the Holy Name, don’t feel bad. It isn’t one of the days supported in our culture the way some others are. I’ve never seen a card, much less any sort of special food or gift opportunity offered for this feast, and yet it seems that American ingenuity might, if given a chance come up with a way to capitalize on this feast. I mean we all have names. We were all made a part of some line of history and written into the story when we received our names. Christmas has Santa, Easter has the bunny, there’s Cupid for ST. Valentine’s day.....maybe a stork would work for the market-place version of “Name Day”. Nowadays, our names are pinned on us as soon as we are born, no big ceremony or to do. Some nurse asks what the baby’s name is and that’s that. Maybe a hospital bracelet could be the symbol for name day. If you don’t recognize the feast we celebrate today, maybe it’s because we just don’t make as big a deal out of naming our kids as we used to.
We still name our children when we baptize them, but I know from a question on the ordination exams that if you call a kid by the wrong name when you baptize him, he’s still Joe, or Fred, or whatever he was when he came in. He’s now a Christian, but getting the name wrong in the ceremony doesn’t confuse God. God has already seen that hospital bracelet.
Time was when naming a child was a huge event. In some churches the celebrant still says “name this child” to the parents as the child is brought to the water. Receiving a name and taking one’s place in the congregation happened at the same time. The name became a sign of belonging. In Jesus’community it wasn’t baptism, but circumcision that marked him as one of God’s chosen. In all the prayer books before the current one, this feast was called “The Circumcision of Christ”. It was changed among other reasons because the focus was always supposed to be on the name, and while the reading from Luke mentions circumcision, it is the name that is central. In the one sentence we add to the Christmas story this morning we hear that Jesus receives the name foretold by the angel. By complying with the custom of his time, and by going through the ritual of being marked as a jew, Jesus becomes not some sort of generic, model human, but a very particular, one-of-a-kind person just like the rest of us.
It doesn’t matter whether you received a family name, or a creative new one from the “what-to-name-your-baby” book. The name you were given marks you as a part of a line of history, a history that shapes what the world knows about you, how it defines you. A history you can work with or push against, but one of which you are a part.
I’ll never know for sure, but I’m guessing I am a John because my mother was tired of Samuels. There were a lot of them on my dad’s side. John is from a great grandfather and an uncle who didn’t live past infancy. Marcus, my middle name will always be a mystery. Maybe my mother was reading Julius Caesar while she waited out her days, or maybe it was the current hot name. I doubt that though, cause I never ran into any other “Marcuses” in school. Or maybe they just had the good sense to keep that part of their story quiet. Some names just don’t get used any more. Maybel, Hazel, Beulah. I haven’t heard of an Archie in a while, or Heflin. I grew up with a Heflin and he may well be the last one. I once read an interesting bit of theology from the early nineteen hundreds written by a fellow named Algernon S. Crapsey.
I’ve often wondered what the S. stood for.
Did he just list the initial because it was a name he didn’t want anyone to hear?
I think of my “Marcus” and say there but for the grace of God go I.
Still, Mr. Crapsey’s name was a fine one. Memorable, substantial. The kind of name you can pull at and twist until you find a thread of history. Who knows? There may have been a dozen Algernons before that guy, but I wouldn’t give you odds on the name’s future. Some names just slip away.
But not Jesus. As the hispanic population grows in this part of the continent, we are learning that Jesus is still a pretty common name. Lots of folks name their children Jesus, maybe trying to chart a path for this new child, or maybe because it is just a good name, or maybe because it is a family name. Some names are difficult to live into. I wonder if the King family when they named their son Martin Luther had visions of him taking on the establishment the way his namesake did. The name Jesus received was a form of the name Joshua, which means salvation from Jehovah. How in the world do you stretch yourself into a name like that? In a way, I guess, a name becomes what you make it. The history written into your name is what you start with, but the history you make while you wear a name becomes part of that name and will always be a part of it, at least in the community where that name is your mark.
The only reason we’re here talking about Jesus at all is that he lived into his name. His name had deep roots in the stories, hopes and beliefs of his people going back for generations. Mary and Joseph named their child as they had been instructed, and within days there were shepherds and kings showing up at their door....strangers telling them what they had learned from angels and the stars about this child. Jesus lived into his name in such a way that after he was gone the people who had known him could see that he had embodied the hope for salvation from Jehovah. They considered the meaning of his name, and the long history of a particular people in a particular part of the world who had waited long for God to act. They understood with their hearts long before they began to work it out in their heads that God had acted....in their particular time....in the person of Jesus.....a human being.
He was marked as a member of the tribe and named by parents who had their reasons for choosing the name they did. A name written forever into the unfolding human story. One very particular historical person named Jesus.
JMB