The Sermons At Calvary
By The Reverend Rhonda Lee
Holy Name
Luke 2:15-21
Besides the Bible, the greatest source of expressions and aphorisms
in English is probably the work of William Shakespeare. If we speak of being cruel to be kind, we
quote Shakespeare; if we talk about star-crossed lovers, that’s from the
prologue to “Romeo and Juliet”; if we can’t understand another person’s
argument and say “It’s all Greek to me,” we’re borrowing a phrase from the
Bard. Likewise if we laugh ourselves
into stitches, play fast and loose, are tongue-tied, have cold comfort or too
much of a good thing, or insist on fair play.[1] I could go on and on, but you probably
already understand why thinking about the Feast of the Holy Name immediately
brought to my mind a question from one of Shakespeare’s plays: “What’s in a
name?”
The question, of course, is
Juliet’s. Her family and Romeo’s are
sworn enemies, and no matter how much our two young lovers may want to marry
each other, it’s just not going to happen.
Young Juliet isn’t yet hardened to the ways of the world, and she has a
brilliant idea, a way through their dilemma: “Deny thy father and refuse thy
name; Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a
Capulet.” After all, she reasons, “What’s
in a name? That which we call a rose,
by any other name would smell as sweet.”
That’s a radical statement in her world, where your name is related to
your family, your property, your honour – all the things that are supposed to
matter. Romeo and Juliet learn that
there is a lot in a name, and they
end up being together only in death.
Today’s feast also teaches us that
there is a lot in a name. Today we
remember Jesus as an infant, eight days old.
He is a Jewish infant and so, according to the custom of his people he
is circumcised and named on the eighth day after his birth. New parents often agonize over what to name
their baby, but Mary and Joseph didn’t have to. The name of their child was given to Mary even before he was
conceived, by the angel who brought her the news that she would bear “the Son
of the Most High,” whose reign would last forever. The angel told Mary, “You will name him Jesus” – which means
“salvation” in Hebrew. It would be
pronounced “Yeshua” or “Isaiah” – “Joshua” or “Isaiah” in English.
Jesus was a common name in
first-century Palestine. Naming a child
Jesus might be a statement of faith: an expression of the belief that God was
with the Hebrew people, that God would save them, that they wouldn’t be
abandoned forever. But this time the
name had a different meaning. This
child would be the one to bridge the gap between humanity and God, to initiate
the reign of God in this broken world, to show once and for all just how much
God loved the world and everyone in it.
What’s in a name? A lot.
Naming this child “Jesus” was a radical statement, even more than
Juliet’s request that Romeo give up his name to be her husband, even more than
her willingness to do the same to be his wife.
Think about how audacious it was for Mary to name this particular baby
Salvation. She was a poor Jewish
teen-ager who got pregnant before she was married, and she had the nerve to
name her baby Salvation. She may have
known, and we may know, that the baby was the child of God, but the neighbours
didn’t know that. Can’t you just hear
them? “She turns up pregnant and now
she says she’s going to call it Salvation?
Well, I never!” And what about
the Romans who occupied her country, the civil servants, the soldiers who
patrolled the streets looking for trouble before it could really get
started? I can hear them too: “You can
call that kid Salvation if you want, honey, but I can tell you that nothing
will save your people. Better just keep
your heads down and enjoy whatever benefits the Roman empire can throw your
way.”
The neighbours may think that
salvation comes from keeping your nose clean and staying out of trouble, and
the Romans may think that salvation comes from having the strongest armies and
the strongest economy in the world. But
Mary’s song, the Magnificat, shows us that she had studied the words of the
prophets and she knew what salvation really looks like: “...[God] has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their
thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty....” In
her heart, Mary knows that people like her, the young, the poor, the unwed
mothers, will be vindicated in the end, and that somehow her son will make that
happen.
But first God needed her help. God needed Mary to say “yes” to bearing the
Saviour even though doing that would cost her dearly. God needed Joseph to say “yes” to keeping his engagement to Mary
and to raising her child as his own. At
the end of the baby’s life, when he was all grown up and alone in the garden of
Gethsemane, God needed Jesus to say “yes” to going to the cross. After his resurrection, Jesus needed his
disciples to say “yes” to bringing God’s message of salvation to the world,
even when that meant that many of them would end up on the cross
themselves. And today, Jesus still
needs us to bring the message of salvation to the world, through our actions as
well as our words. We don’t have to be
afraid that we’ll end up like Romeo and Juliet, because if we say “yes” to God,
we will never be left alone. The holy
name of Jesus makes us that promise. Blessed be that name.