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Holy Name: January 1, 2003
H O M I L Y G R I T S
The Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus
Christ
January 1, 2003
(C)Copyright 2001 Grant
Gallup
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary -
Exodus 34:1-8 The Lord said, I will write
Psalm 8 Domine, Dominus noster
Romans 1:1-7 Set apart for the gospel of God
Luke 2:15-21 Jesus, the name given by the angel
¶ Revised Common Lectionary
Holy Name of Jesus/ Mary, Mother of God
Numbers 6:22-27 The Aaronic Blessing
Psalm 8 Domine, Dominus noster.
Galatians 4:4-7 Born a woman's child, born subject to law
or Philippians 2:5-13 He impoverished himself , taking the nature of a slave
Luke 2:15-21 Meanwhile the shepherds went back to their flock
New Year's Day
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 For everything there is a season
Numbers 6:22-27 as above
Psalm 8 as above
Galatians 4:4-7 as above
or Philippians 2:5-13 as above
Luke 2:15-21 as above
In an old Christmas issue of a Church magazine a cartoon depicted a
little girl and her mother in a holiday department store, standing before a
bewildering array of dollies. They nowadays can be fed, will wet their
pants, can talk from tiny tape recorders or microchips in their plastic
heads. There are also little boy dolls, soldiers with guns or space cadets
with death rays. Some years ago there was Bruce, a Gay Doll, complete with
his own closet and change of high fashion clothes and blue jeans. I never
got to see one, but I heard about the Cabbage Patch dolls, each of which
had an identity and a Name, and a birth certificate. In the cartoon I saw
a little girl looking bewildered and one shopgirl whispering to another
"What on earth is a Babe-in-a-Manger?" We've heard of all the dollies but
that one.
That's the one with a Name, the one we came to see, the Christmas
Child: like the Cabbage Patch doll, He has an identity and he has a
Name. In the midst of every little girl's search for the perfect little
doll of a child, Mary brings one out today: the Babe-in-a-Manger. On the
eighth day the little Jewish boy is taken to the moyel and circumcised, and
a name given. We used to call this the Feast of the Circumcision, but
liturgical squeamishness got the upper hand and slapped that penis
down. But three cathedrals in Europe managed to salvage and enrhine the
foreskin. What was important was the Naming, not the cutting, in any
case. But the foreskin meant humanity, something religion has a tendency
to cut off.
And Names used to mean something, and still ought to. For our Biblical
religion makes the Naming of People of highest importance. The first
official words spoken over us in church used to be "Name this child." The
old Prayer Book assumed that Naming took place then, at Baptism; alas,
nowadays that is lost when months or years later the Sponsors mumble out,
"I present N. to receive the Sacrament of Baptism." To Name someone is to
betstow an identity for them to live up to, and into. Indeed, to know the
name of someone is to have power over them, some influence. Name, rank,
and serial number, are the first things a surrendered soldier must give to
captors. In the Prayer Book, "N." stands for Name, and is asked for in many
places. In the Bible, God creates and names The Adam and The Eve, and
calls the animals by their names. Children used to be given automatically
the last names--the apellidos in Spanish, not the nombres--of their
Fathers, because he was to have power over them. Nowadays some get the
matronym as well, as all Hispanic chiledren do. Women took the names of
their husbands to replace those of their fathers, when they got
married. Apart from the apellido (the last name) kids were often given
three names--one for each of the persons of the Trinity--so my mother got
named Eleanora Elsa Wilhelmina--because she was born on Kaiser Wilhelm's
birthday, January 27th. She lived it down.
The first names of children ought to reflect some relationshp with their
history, and some dedication of their future. Changes take place in names
when significant things happen, too.
So Saul changed to Paul. When religious profession became as important as
Baptism in a person's life, they took new names, too, in some communities;
Thomas Merton got the first name of Mary when he became a Trappist.
We wear our names a long, long time, and there's a good deal of evidence
that a child named with an odd name will be an odd child. A child given a
great name has a chance, at least, to live into it. A little Atlanta boy
named after Martin Luther, and with the last name of a royal title, King,
went a long way on that endowment. A child named Lee Harvey Oswald now
would be in a hard place, or one named John Wayne Gacey. Jim Edminster, a
Chicago high school teacher, told me of twins in one class who were named
Orangejellow and Lemonjello, pronounced Orangelo and Lemongelo. I had a
parishioner named Clyster, which is a kind of enema. I expect the parents
asked the doctor for a suggestion. We ought to take more care with names;
Mary took care, and asked the angel for a name for her baby.
Jesus is given a Jewish name--a good Jewish name, but it's a name that
some Spanish speaking people use quite a lot for their own kids. I
remember that on the west side of Chicago some school teaching Irish nuns
were shocked to find little Puerto Rican or Mexican kids with the holy name
of Jesus, 'though Maria had no objections. Jesus is the English version
of a Greek rendering of an Aramaic slant on a Hebrew name. The Hebrew name
was Jehosha, or Joshua for short. Yeshua in Aramaic. It means "Yahweh
saves". So it's quite incorrect to say Jesus Saves, because the name
'Jesus' means that it is Yahweh who Saves.
Jesus was, significantly, not given the name of Joseph, his earthly father,
though the townspeople were confused when they heard of his ministry, and
asked themselves, "Isn't his name Josephson, the carpenter's
boy?" In both the dreams of Joseph and the visions of Mary, he was given
even before he was a gleam in his daddy's eye, the name Jesus, according to
Luke. Yahweh saves.
It's a name to remember. We frequently hear folks say, "I can remember
faces, but I can't remember names." But people ARE NOT their faces, to
live for long behind their faces, you see, as those of us who are in our
old age know, when we compare our faces in the family album with our faces
in the mirror. Our faces are gone--run away in wrinkles and wens, in bags
and sags. People ARE their names, however, which will stick with us till
they are hammered into the marble hats we will wear at Rest Haven. It is in
remembering the names of people that we pay attention to them. Our names
will be intact long after our faces are dust and ashes. It is in knowing
the name of Jesus that we know, ultimately who God is, and indeed we learn
the meaning of our own identity, our own names. Nowadays, at the communion
rail, the ministers are encouraged to try to remember the names of
communicants, and call them all by their names when they take the
wayfarer's food. Names are the badges of their Baptism, reminders of the
day the Name was given.
Dale Carnegie in his book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" which I
read when I was very young and had very few friends outside of fantasy,
wrote that the Sweetest Sound to the Human Ear is the Sound of One's Own
Name. In the midst of a crowded air terminal, or a not-so-crowded Amtrak
station--when we have about given up hope that we will be met after all,
and that our friends have forgotten us, suddenly we hear the Melody, the
Sweetest heavenly hymning of our own name, clarion clear, ringing through
the air like angels in the sky: and we know that we have been met, and are
not alone. One of our hymns sings: "How sweet the name of Jesus' sounds in
a believer's ear." And how sweet our own name sounds in our own ears and
in the mouths of dearest friends. Our hymnals, old and new, have lots of
devotion to the Name of Jesus, and make a singing book of Jesus prayers.
In the time of the Law and the Prophets, the name of God was to precious
that there's a revelation about it: "It is not to be taken
lightly." That's the meaning of "You shall not take the name of YHWH your
G-D in vain." People became so frightened that they might take the Name
frivolously that they refused to use it at all, even in prayer, except at
the Temple, where God's Name was said to have its own home. In synagogues
across the land God could only be spoken of as Adonai, the Lord, and not as
YHWH. About a hundred years ago a Sunday School teacher named Charls Taze
Russell thought he had discovered the name of God was Jehovah (actually, a
mispronunciation) so he started a new religion based on the idea that you
had to know that Name for God or you couldn't be saved. Like most all
heresies, there's a grain of truth in it. ("Haeresis" means "seizing" or
"grabbing" and that's what heresy does--it grabs onto a corner of something
true and ignores the whole.) In the first reading, we are told that
Aaron the Priest, Moses' brother, was given the name of God so that he
could bless God's people: "Thus you shall bless the people," he was
told. "The Lord (Yahweh) bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon
you (that is, take notice of you--a shining face, a face glowing with
recognition, with joy) May God's face 'light up' when he sees you. . . And
the Lord be gracious to you, look you in the eye, raise up his head to look
at you, and give you thereby his shalom." And so YHWH says, "So shall the
priests put my name upon the people, and I will bless them. It is the
putting of God's name on something that blesses it. It is the calling of
God's name over someone that blesses them. It's hard to look away when God
calls you by name. God promises that God won't look away from us when we
call out that Name.
In bestowing the name of Jesus on the babe of Nazareth, we are told by Paul
that thereby "God has highly exlted him, and given him a Name which is
above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue have
the name upon it: Jesus, Jesus Christ, Yeshua Messiah."
Paul says access to this Name is Access to God.
In the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Jesus Prayer is similar to use of
Mary's rosary in the western churches; they are both more mantra than
liturgical prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have
mercy. This prayer is said with breathing exercises, sometimes for hours
upon end, and in simple store-front religion amongst African Americans the
name of Jesus is also used in a mantra like prayer, "Thank you Jesus! Thank
you Jesus!" Some evangelical Christians call themseles Jesus people, and
there are Pentecostalist Christians who are Unitarians of the Second
Person, believing only Jesus to be
the Divine God of all Gods, praying only to him.
St. Paul goes on in the epistle today to tell us: It is because of the
name of Jesus that we are now enabled to work out our own salvation, our
own liberation, with fear and trembling. that is, to figure out our own
role in the movement begun by Jesus the Liberator, to work out in a humble
way, with dependendce upon God's help, how it will actually come to pass
that we will be liberated. Paul says God is at work in us, both to will
and to work his good pleasure.
So New Years is a time when the old is put away, and the new is put to
work. All the old things are set aside, and the whole world celebrates the
new year, the new Age of the new Siglo. The Winter Solstice has always
made it natural and even fun to have a celebration. The birthday of Sol
Invictus, the unconquered Sun, gives an occasion for all humankind to keep
the feast. The angels leave--they go back to their work, too--and the
shepherds go back to their work, and to glorify and praise, for what they
had heard and seen. And Mary goes back to keeping and pondering the
story, and gestating our liberation, and singing of our freedom. These are
the two liturgical activities of Christmas time--pondering and
praisisng. Pondering means contemplation, reflection, study, insight,
lectio divina, exegesis, traditio: being pregnant with God. And praise in
all its forms--Voice, orchestra, symphony and song, doing justice is the
highest hymnody of all. So we keep the feast.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS now on-line: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/grits.html