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.
There is blood in Bethlehem. This we have already seen in the disturbing and yet profound feast of the Holy Innocents. “These are they who follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth,” Revelation tells us. They follow even though they go before; they follow because as with all of us we derive our being and our life from God and thus from God in Christ. And “whithersoever he goeth” implies already the Cross. The deaths of the little ones are intimately joined to Christ in his sacrifice which is only possible through his body, his flesh. We are joined to Christ. He suffers in us and we in him even when we are the cause of the suffering.
With the circumcision of Christ, there is again blood in Bethlehem. It is literally the blood of Christ, “made of a woman, made under the law,” Paul tells us, “to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” Such is “the fullness of the time” through which time and our humanity finds its truth and meaning. It is found in our incorporation into the body of Christ.
Christian theology will argue for baptism as the Christian complement to circumcision and, without taking away from its bodily and indeed gendered reality, will point to the circumcision of our hearts as the necessary requirement for our being embodied, as it were, in Christ. It marks a new and radical beginning just as we embark upon the beginning of new year in secular terms. The point is that the secular too finds its truth and meaning in the sacred; an old truth which we would do well to reclaim and so free ourselves from the endlessness of the narratives of conflict. “Thou couldest have no power at all against me,” Jesus says to Pontius Pilate, “except it were given thee from above.” All power and all truth is of God. In Christ, God is with us but his being with us is about salvation. His name is Jesus.
The idea of blood in Bethlehem highlights for us the deeper meaning of the Christmas mystery. It is the mystery of redemption, of Christ as Saviour through his death and passion. This reality only heightens the exaltant names in Isaiah’s great hymn, the names that are like titles, like jewels in Christ’s crown of thorns: “Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” It is hard not to break forth into song but these are terms which adorn the name of Jesus. They belong to the mystery which we are bidden to contemplate, being like Mary and “keep[ing] all these things” that are said about “this thing which has come to pass” and ponder[ing] them in [our] hearts.” We ponder the mystery of Jesus, saviour.
His name was called JESUS
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Christmas, 2019