Naming Is the Human Vocation

Feast of the Holy Name   A  January 1, 2017
Numbers 6:22-27  Psalm 8

Galatians 4:4-7  Philippians 2:5-11 Luke 2:15-21 

Lectionary Link

  An Iowan farmer who also raised livestock, cows and pigs, had only daughters and no sons.  So the daughters had to do chores.  They had to take care of the animals too.  But with his daughters, the farmer realized that he had a seriously emotional dilemma.  His  girls loved to feed the cows and the pigs but the problem was that they got so attached to the animals, they gave all of the pigs and cows names.  They could recognize their individualities and they would talk to them, call them and train them.  But this became a real problem when the calves and the young swine were fed out and became massive huge animals destined for the stockyards and for the tables of carnivores in America.  Once the girls had given the animals a name, it was hard to view them as simply commodities for sale.

  What do humans do?  We give names.  In the story about the first human being, Adam, we are told that God gave Adam the task of naming all of the animals.

  This story about naming means that the most profound way that men and women were made in the image of God was because we name.  When we name we create difference.

  The creation story tells us that God created by naming.  God named something and then it came into being.  God said, "Let there be Light," and there was light.   So God giving something a name before it existed is how we are told that creation happened.

  The beginning of the Gospel of John retells the creation story:  In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.  All things were created by the Word.  And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.

  And what is the name of the Word becoming a fleshly, human being?  His name was Jesus.

  The story of Jesus is a story about how new creation happens in a significant way.  New creation is always happening as long as there are human beings using language.  We are made in God  image in having language and we are called to name things.  Everything eventually comes to have a name if it comes to human attention.  Things that we don't know, we still name them as "mystery."  We give names, even to things that we don't know.

  What we do know is that in this world of creation there is freedom for lots of good things and bad things to occur.  The story in the Bible is about how to live in a free world and participate with a good and loving kind direction in our lives?

  The way in which we know the direction of goodness and kindness is when a personal example arises in our lives and history to show us what is the greatest and best way to live.

  Jesus Christ arose in the life of human beings and he was so good and so great that he became the standard for how humanity should live and love and care for each other and for our world.  The New Testament is a story about the after effects of the life of Jesus.  When there were so many profound after effects in the life of Jesus, his story had to be told and preserved for people of every generation and so the words had to be preserved.  Words are spirit and they are life; they are a hidden reality of our humanity which guide the directions of our lives.  So we need to be not just passive recipients of word ability, we need to be informed about how we use our words.  We need to focus upon the examples of people who have been most creative, loving, just and kind with the words and body language loving deeds of their lives.

  In the telling the story of Jesus, the story of his birth was told.  Jesus was born into a family in Nazareth.  He lived within the religious tradition of Judaism.  In the rituals of Judaism, a baby boy on the eighth day of his life was circumcised and named in a special dedicatory ceremony.  This ceremony marked the young baby as belonging to God's people and he bore that mark on his body.  And the eighth day was the day for naming.

  We name babies with aspiration and hopes for their future.  Different cultures have different naming traditions.  The entire Hebrew Scripture could be called a "naming" tradition.  If fact, if one simply looked at the meaning of the names of the persons whose stories are told in the Hebrew Scriptures, one can find the theology of the authors represented in the personal names.

  Jesus came into a family that had a naming tradition.  They were proud of him but the church believed that the parents of Jesus had communication before his birth about his name and his destiny.  The angel told his parents that his name was to be Jesus.  This was an Aramaic version of the Hebrew name Joshua, or Yeshua.  This name means, The Lord God, Yaheweh is salvation.

  So the name of Jesus was a proclamation about nature of God and God's purpose for humanity.  God's nature is to preserve and save.  God's action is to save and preserve and this is the theology of the name of Jesus.

  We can fast forward from the naming ceremony of Jesus to his afterlife in his post-resurrection appearances, his ascension and his ability to be continually made known to people who are alive.

  The resurrection of Christ was an announcement that God is the one who can preserve and save all life and that the Holy Spirit is given to us as evidence of this assurance that we will be preserved with the personal identity that each of us has as signified by the fact that we have been given a personal name within our community of significant people.

  The significance of the name of Jesus is related fully after his resurrection life within the church.  The resurrected Christ is the active sign of God's preserving and saving action.

  We sometimes try to forget the subsequent events in the life of Jesus when we try to read the story of his life in the chronological order of the Gospel writers.  We need to embrace the Holy Name of Jesus as a proclamation of what the church believed about God and how the nature of God was further revealed because of the life of Jesus.

  The name of Jesus is Holy because he has attained a special human uniqueness to inform, guide and inspire the direction of God for humanity toward, faith, love and justice. Why?  Because we live knowing that God is our ultimate salvation and preservation.  Amen.