Mundane Saving Name
January 1, 2023
Christmas 1 and Holy Name
According to the Gospel of Luke, there is only one Joshua in Joseph’s lineage: more than 25 generations back – therefore around 500 years – earlier. Jesus is the nickname for Joshua, the Betsy to Elizabeth. However, in their generation, in Judea, it, Joshua and therefore Jesus, was a wildly popular name. It was today’s Olivia or Emma or Liam or Oliver. In the US Joshua was recently popular, in the top five from the 1980s until the early 2000s, but by 2021 it had fallen to #58. And Jesus, well actually JESÚS, is currently #170. Jesus – or Joshua – means God is salvation. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Joshua was Moses’ appointed successor who led the people of God out of the wilderness of Sinai and into the promised land. It’s a foreshadowing of glory and of trouble, it is a notable name, but it is Michael and Jennifer and Ashley and Jacob. It is a meaningful mundane name. He will be named Jesus; in his name there is a lesson, a hope, and a prayer.
This is the first Sunday after Christmas and it is also the feast of the Holy Name. The name of a child is just a daydream before they rest in our arms. Something connective, maybe a flight of fancy: Leia, London, Legend. But when attached to a person, a name takes on flesh, body, blood, and bone. The name becomes a smile, a look, a finger, a toe. When we name our children, our pets, our churches:
we are telling a story in a few syllables. Naming a child Noah, #2, or Sophia, #6 & #18 (with different spellings) shares an intention with the world. Noah, you will be steadfast and brave, Sophia you are wise and discerning. When God gives Mary the name Jesus for her firstborn son is it almost an incantation? By embodying his own intention in the name, does God remind us, remind those who follow him, of the whole point? God is salvation.
The season of Christmas is 12 days from Christmas to Epiphany. It explores more deeply the meaning of this holy mystery. If we pay real attention to the lessons of the 12 days, we would investigate the beauty and the tragedy of this incantation in a name. God is salvation. This whole thing is trustworthy, and it is for the common good. Christmas isn’t sweet baby trappings, that is a later wrapping. Christmas is a wild startling, because in this person – even in his infancy – there is eternal purpose, power and presence;
but perhaps more importantly there is also humility, adaptation, and even humor. The liberating presence of God in Jesus, is promising itself to our salvation in this daring shout from a cradle. We are asked as lovers of God and followers of Jesus to just such a daily offering of self and future of initiative and imagination.
Today is also New Years Day, a moment of looking ahead with hope, a cultural desire to set the tone for what lies ahead. Today is still Christmas, and as I mentioned, the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. Each day is Christmas – with the Love of God born for us. Each day is Good Friday – with our sin and evil striking that love down. Each day is Easter – with Love triumphing over death forever,
and each day is Pentecost – with those who Love God being sent out in the name of Love. This year I challenge you to name those four realities of Jesus’ name, of his salvation, to name them four days each week. Create a pattern, and recall it in prayer, in study, and in action. We remember Jesus’ naming ceremony the one that every Jewish boy encounters on his 8th day: a bris. It reminds us of how a name, like the body, is connected to a lineage, that our beloved child is raised consistently in an ancient tradition. We are a people with a pattern of life, of a relationship with God; a people to be good news, to repair the world.
Jesus is one of the most spoken words in our language; often a prayer, but also often just an exclamation. If it is just syllables in the heat of the moment does it mean anything at all? What about the mother whose precious child holds that name? Does it break her heart? And what if those moments of exclamation are the religious version of a Freudian slip? A prayer that the speaker didn’t even know they intended? Names are fluid, flexible and at the same time, established and embodied. Like water, they can sit in a glass on the table, or they can become part of us, taken in for nourishment and salvation. When we pray by name in worship, the names I do not know hover in the space between myself and the long loving look at the real that is prayer. The names I do know, even if it is not the intended person in the prayer list; for me, it is rooted in God’s peace and purpose, and in the mystery of our relationship
intention is sparked for both the intended and the person who comes to my mind. Names are fluid, they are a memory and a body;
a powerful hope and an ordinary thing.
The Holy Name of Jesus is a memory and a body and a profound hope and most unexpectedly,an ordinary thing. Salvation comes wildly, not in fireworks, but through the earthy and mundane, through young hands and hearts and hopes of people named names they don’t have to spell – and those no one ever gets right. You will name him Jesus; God is salvation. This is still Christmas. The Living God, by the nickname of Joshua, will lead us out of whatever wilderness we find ourselves in.