Jesus Gives A New Name
Name of Jesus – January 1, 2012
At 15 months, my daughter Norah is finally starting to use some recognizable words. Mainly, she's working on learning the names of things. She knows her own name when we use it, and she's starting to label the everyday things she comes in contact with or sees in books – Dog. Cat. Ball. Baby. Drink. Dolly. She's also learning that people have personal names: Mama. Dada. And of course we are thrilled about that! And with all of these new words, Norah has grasped a big new concept. Not only that things have names, but that knowing the name is important, that knowing a name allows her to have a new kind of relationship with that thing, to distinguish it from other people and things, to be able to ask for who or what she wants. There is power in knowing a name.
The people of ancient Israel knew this to be true too. They knew that names were important, that they had significance. We know how much time most people put into choosing just the right name for their children. Heck, it took Andy and I several days to find the right names for our pets! It was a good thing we had several months to think of names for our daughter. And if that's true for us today, in Biblical times, the naming of a child was of even greater consequence, because within the Bible, knowing someone's name meant understanding that person's identity in ways that our society can't quite imagine. Knowing a name would tell you something about a person – it pointed to their character and their place in the world. Names meant something – which is why you see so many biblical characters getting new names after an encounter with God, because something about them changes, and that requires a name change: Abram (exalted ancestor) becomes Abraham (ancestor of a multitude) when God promises Abraham will become the father of many nations; Jacob (He supplants) becomes Israel (The one who strives with God) after he spends a night wrestling with God. As our confirmation students have been learning as we've looked at stories from Genesis and Exodus, names in the Bible, even the names of places, mean something. They tell you something about those people or places. And the understanding then was that knowing the name of someone bestowed some level of power over that person.
This concept isn't unfamiliar to us. We know the importance of names, we even know that names mean something – that's why there are all of those baby name books out there, complete with a little definition about where the name came from and what it signifies. As someone whose name isn't spelled the way people expect it to be, I've always worked hard to learn the right pronunciation and preferred names for people – because even in our day and age, names are a huge part of our identity. The theme song from Cheers had it right, “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.” Because if someone knows your name, there's a better chance that you may be known. Valued.
Names have power. I'm not just talking about our given names, though. There are names that people will give us beyond what is on our birth certificate or name tags – names with the power to put us down or lift us up. Names with the power to wound or heal. Names that tell us we are ugly or pretty, stupid or smart, freak or friend, worthless or worthwhile. These are names that seek to tell us who we are, names that we let identify us, names that influence the way we understand ourselves and our value in the eyes of the world. We've heard a lot of stories in the news in this past year about the power of hurtful names to destroy lives, to drive people to extremes, even to suicide. That is how powerful names can be.
Our gospel story this morning revisits the tale end of our Christmas Eve story, with the shepherds going to Bethlehem to see Jesus and Mary and Joseph with their own eyes and share their story of angels appearing in the night sky and then returning on their way. But we get one extra verse today that we didn't hear on Christmas Eve. It's kind of matter of fact, this verse 21, just telling us a little bit about the early days of Jesus' earthly life: “After eight days,” Luke tells us, “ 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.” Just one extra verse, but this one verse contains a crucial moment. His circumcision marked Jesus' acceptance into a community built around God's covenant with God's people, and that circumcision plus his naming gave him an identity, as it did for all children. It tells Jesus and everyone else who he is. The giving of this name “was an act of blessing, a dedication of the child to God, and a declaration of the child's heritage and character.” And this name, Jesus, which means “God saves,” given to him by the angel Gabriel before he was even conceived, identified him from the very beginning as the One who would be the Savior of the world. It's a weighty name. There's a lot to live up to in that name. The giving of that name is the beginning of the fulfillment of what the angel had foretold.
It is in this One, Jesus, Son of God, Savior, that we receive our identity. Despite the names the world or our family or friends may label us with, despite the ways that they would try to tell us who we are, our identity ultimate comes from and rests in Christ Jesus. Just like Abram and Jacob, when we have an encounter with the living, holy One, we are given a new name. As we are baptized into Christ's life, death, and resurrection, God names each of us, “Child of God”. This is what Paul is talking about in the letter to the Galatians that was our 2nd lesson when he says “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son...so that we might receive adoption as children. And because [we] are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying 'Abba! Father!' (Gal. 4:4, 6). This name we are given allows us to call God by a new name. It names a new relationship. Abba is more like Daddy or Papa. Close. Intimate. Trusting. In baptism, in Jesus, we learn the name of God, and even more important, we discover that God knows our name! God puts the Divine Name on us and blesses us! This name trumps and outweighs any of the other hurtful, damaging names we may be given, even the ones we sometimes give ourselves.
As we enter into this new year, may we learn to know ourselves by our God-given name. May we claim our identity, may we embrace and let ourselves be embraced by this relationship with the one who created us, who formed us, who claims us, and let ourselves, our relationships, our whole lives be transformed by the name we have been given, “Child of God.”
Amen.
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