by CCW | 1 January 2016 15:00
What’s in a name? Mere words signifying whatever we choose? Or something more signifying the truth and the reality of what is signified? How do we name things? Are the terms of our naming merely conventions which could be otherwise? Are there not many different names for the same things and are there not different meanings and shades of meaning belonging to words themselves? Such is the wonder and the mystery of words and names.
Something of the wonder and the mystery of words and names are concentrated for us in Bethlehem. What are we to make of the strong words and names proclaimed in the Scriptures on this Octave Day of Christmas? Bethlehem, it seems, is the place of words and names that speak beyond the confines of a stable and a manger. Bethlehem is the place where the Word made flesh is named and signified as Jesus. Such is the wonder and the mystery of this day.
The idea of the Word made flesh, it seems to me, challenges the all-too-easy nominalism and relativism of our culture, as if names were merely of our choosing and at our convenience and as if names and words convey no real meaning beyond what meaning we choose to give to them; in short, that words and names signify no reality. We are really only talking to ourselves.
But Bethlehem shows us something more. It makes visible the astounding wonder of the unity of creation with the Creator and the unity of the whole of our humanity considered in and through the objective differences of its constituent parts. Bethlehem speaks to the deep desires of human hearts and to the form of those desires in their contemporary complexity. What are our environmental concerns about except a yearning and a longing for some sort of connection with the world of which we are a constituent part but from which we have alienated ourselves by our technocratic exuberance and arrogance? What are our social and political concerns about except a yearning and a longing for peace and harmony, for true unity and respect for all the peoples of the world?
Does not Bethlehem speak to such hopes and aspirations? Does not the spectacle of the Word made flesh in the lowliness and humility of Bethlehem speak to our desires? “Rich and poor, high and low, one with another”, shepherds and the Magi-Kings, the poor of the earth and the angels of heaven, humans and animals, men and women, and, especially, God and man, are all one in the wonder and worship of the child of Bethlehem. Here words and names begin to find their meaning.
“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem”, the shepherds say after “the angels were gone from them into heaven” and “see this thing which is come to pass”. What is this thing? This thing is the Word made flesh, the child “wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” which “shall be a sign unto you”, the angel had said. This thing is literally “that which is spoken” which has literally happened, which “is come to pass”, come to reality, as it were. “Hoc verbum, quod factum est”, as the Latin Vulgate puts it, thereby making inescapable the connection to the great Christmas gospel, “and the Word was made flesh”, “et verbum caro factum est”. Words illuminating words through the illumination of the Word who is the Light and Son of God. “This thing which is come to pass”, the shepherds say is that “which the Lord has made known unto us”.
Something divine, something heavenly, is made known in the earthly and human realities of Bethlehem, God’s Word redeeming the words of our human discourse, the words of our life together with God and with one another. The American poet and farmer, Wendell Berry, observes, in a collection of essays entitled Standing by Words, that the two great diseases of contemporary culture are the disintegration of communities and the disintegration of individuals. He makes the important point that both forms of disintegration relate to the disintegration of language. Bethlehem is the place of the beginnings of the reintegration of language, of word and meaning, of names and things, the place of the reintegration of souls and communities of souls precisely through the great reaching-down of God’s Word to us, the Word made flesh taking shape in us, recalling us to the greater unities of our lives together. At the heart of that reintegration is the meaning and the purpose of the Church signified as the Body of Christ at Bethlehem.
The naming of the child belongs to the reality of the Word made flesh. Names are the great signifiers of purpose and identity. Word, Light and Son are the great critical images for our understanding of the wonder of God with us, itself captured in a name that conveys that meaning, Emmanuel. Isaiah, too, prophesies that “his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace”, and we may wonder what kind of names are these? It would be wonderful indeed to go through the logic of these terms and see the vast scope of scriptural connections and allusions that these terms as names evoke. But in the context of the Octave Day of Christmas, it is enough to note that this is the name-day of the child of Bethlehem, and that in his being named Jesus, he enters at once into the history of the hopes and fears of Israel as well as “the hopes and fears of all the years” of all the peoples of the world.
The wonder of this day, however, lies in the unity of heaven and earth in the naming of the child. It is his name from the eternity of heaven, “so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb”. It is the name bestowed by Joseph, the humble spouse of Mary, the protector of the child of God, upon angelic direction. It is the name given by Mary, too, at the direction of the angel Gabriel at her annunciation. It is the name before which all heaven and earth must bow, in wonder and delight and in prayer and praise, the name given for us.
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Christmas
January 1st, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/01/01/sermon-for-the-octave-day-of-christmas-7/
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