Sermon for the Octave Day of Christmas
His name was called JESUS
The descriptive titles for today are a bit of a mouthful: “The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ being New Year’s Day,” and, as if to underline the titles, we have not one, not two, but three Collects! All this belongs to the rich fullness of the Christmas mystery and yet that rich fullness, so theologically significant and doctrinally suggestive, centers on the name of Jesus, literally highlighted for us in Luke’s account by being printed in capital letters. JESUS. In the digital culture, it is a shout-out.
We learned via St. Matthew’s Gospel on Sunday that his name means ‘saviour’; “for he shall save his people from their sins.” Yeshua – Joshua – Jesus, saviour. It is a compelling and intriguing term, a name with an explicit meaning, a name signifying the divine purpose of Christ’s holy birth, a name named by the angel, named by Joseph, and now named by Mary herself. It is a name worth pondering upon, in the manner of Mary and Joseph, in contemplative wonder.
The rich fullness of images which belong to the crowded cluster of things in the Bethlehem scene all center on Jesus and on who he is for us. Emmanuel means God with us and that, too, is said, of the Son brought forth of a Virgin. But what God with us actually means takes on a much fuller meaning with the actual name, Jesus, saviour. It speaks of redemption and of what God seeks for our humanity which is nothing less, it seems, than our actual incorporation into the life of God through God speaking divine things to us in human ways. Such is the incarnation. The deeper reality of this divine speaking humanly, and resoundingly, we might say, is seen in the particular feature of Christ’s circumcision. At once a required ritual belonging to Jewish religious identity, it also signals the reality of Christ’s humanity. It belongs to the rituals of the Jewish Law and yet speaks universally to the redemption of the whole of our humanity.
That is salvation. It is accomplished in and through the sacrifice of Christ, in and through his taking our sins upon him and saving us from all that diminishes and destroys the real truth of our humanity which is found in Christ. God with us means God giving himself for us.
