St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Cleveland, Tennessee

First Sunday after Christmas
December 27, 2009
The Reverend Deacon Art Bass

Jesus, A Significant Name And A Powerful Word

In the world around us Christmas has ended. This weekend is a time in many homes and places of business to take down decorations and Christmas trees. People are starting to look ahead to the coming of a new year: to New Years Eve parties, first of the year sales events, and endless hours of televised football. We all do it; it's part of our American culture.

But in church, we Episcopalians are still singing Christmas hymns, and the church itself is still decorated for Christmas, because here at least, Christmas is a season - - not just a one day celebration of the Nativity, but twelve days , during which we celebrate a variety of events in the life of the Christ child. Of these twelve days, today is but the third.

While to the secular world, the first day of January heralds the start of a new calendar year, to the church, January 1 is the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which is always observed on the eighth day of the Christmas season.

On Christmas Day this year, I was very blessed and fortunate to spend time with my two children, both of whom are in their mid-twenties. We had a typical family gathering. We exchanged gifts, shared a meal together, and spent a lot of time in conversation, talking about things past and things present.

One of the topics which came up in our conversation was how my children got their names. We talked about the names they actually received, and the names which they almost got, but, much to their relief, didn't.

Both of my children were given family names for their middle names, but for their first names, their Christian names, their mother and I tried to find names that had meaning, names which expressed how we felt about them coming into our lives.

My son is named “Nathaniel”, which comes from Hebrew and means “a gift from God.” My daughter's name is “Abigail”, which is also taken from Hebrew and means “her father's joy.”

Names in both the Old and New Testaments are often taken from common Hebrew words or phrases, so they almost always have a meaning. Sometimes the meaning of a Biblical name is significant to the role or mission of the name bearer. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of Jesus.

The gospel of Luke tells us that on the eighth day, Mary and Joseph had their child circumcised in accordance with Jewish custom, and at that time they gave their child the name
“Jesus”, as the angel of the Lord had told Mary she should dol

The name “Jesus” comes from Aramaic, the spoken Hebrew dialect of two thousand years ago. It has been Latinized and Anglicized, but its meaning in the original Aramaic is “God's salvation”. The name Jesus literally means “God's salvation'.

In the gospel which was read just a few weeks ago on the Third Sunday in Advent, John the Baptist told the people that the Messiah was coming. He told them the valleys would all be filled, the mountains would be made low, and the crooked would be made straight.” He concluded by saying, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” What John's listeners would actually have heard him saying would have been this: “All flesh shall see Jesus.”

Jesus' name was more than just a name. In the person of our Lord, his name was a prophecy made flesh, a divine promise fulfilled. It was a word of power, God's power to redeem and save his people.

Today's gospel reading, the Prologue to the Gospel of John, tells us a few things about the power of a word, especially the word of God.

The gospel reading begins in such a way as to remind us of the creation story from Genesis: ”In the beginiing ….” It reminds us that words spoken by God have the power to cause things to come into being.

The Book of Genesis tells us that the earth was covered in darkness and chaos, but God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light, and God saw the light he had created, and it was good. God continued to speak, and each time he did so, his all powerful word brought new creation. He created plants and animals, birds and fish, every living thing, and all that God created was good.

When all else had been created, God spoke once more and brought into being the crown of his creation. In his own image God created us; he created humankind.

However, the Book of Genesis is not confined to the story of God's creation of us and the world. It is also the story of our fall. It tells how through our disobedience to God's word, a new darkness came into the world. God had made the light, but we made this darkness, the darkness of sin and death. But God loved the world he had created, and even though we did not deserve it, he especially loved us. It grieved his heart to see what we had done to the world and to ourselves.

So in today's gospel there is good news indeed. John begins a new creation story. He tells us that God has sent his salvation into the world to live among us and to be one of us.

John identifies this Salvation, he identifies Jesus, as the all powerful creative word of God, known in Greek as the “Logos”, the source of all life, which had always been with God, and which in fact, was God.

Jesus, “God's Salvation” is a word, a name so powerful that St.Paul describes it as a name “that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend” and “every tongue” confess Jesus “as Lord”.

Through Christ Jesus, the incarnate word of God, all things have been redeemed and all things have been recreated and again made new. We have been given a new beginning and new opportunity in and through Christ, our Lord.

Against the darkness of sin which we caused to exist, Jesus was God's new light to the world and to us. This new light from God was and is a divine light, an eternal light, such that the darkness of sin and death can never overcome it. To all who believe, to all who accept Jesus as the Christ, this light brings enlightenment and illumines the way to new and unending life.

Jesus is the Christ. For us he is the Word, he is the Light, he is God's Salvation.

AMEN