Numbers 6:22-27 Psalm 8
Galatians 4:4-7 Philippians 2:5-11 Luke 2:15-21
Galatians 4:4-7 Philippians 2:5-11 Luke 2:15-21
Normally on the the First Sunday after Christmas we are reading the Christmas story according to the first chapter of John's Gospel, which includes the famous words: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God....And the word became flesh and lived among us.
But today, the Feast of Holy Name takes precedence on this Sunday since it is a major feast of our Lord.
Naming is part of the ritual process of a person within community. Christ as Word and as God is related to the naming event which we celebrate today.
Being human is to be a naming being. We are language users. Language is what might be call the process of naming everything that is not language. We convert to language everything that is not language, things and actions, states of being, interior conditions, yes, everything that can come to language.
Having word and language is living a system of classification, a complete system of placing values of differentiation upon every human experience.
What is not language is more than what is language, so language as events in time is the effort to tame the instability of change and time by imposing upon it the reduction of occasions in time to single words or stories. God who is All, is the supreme example of the naming reduction which happens.
Naming is to abstract becoming with Being. Naming is our effort to assert unity of identity across the diversity of differences.
So how can we live well across the changes of time which are imposed upon us?
We live well in time by the discovery of and the promotion of the very best human examplars.
Popular sport culture refer to the acronyms of the G.O.A.T. The greatest of all time; those who set performance standards.
Who is the greatest of all time in living really well as human beings?
The Gospel writer retroactively revisits the naming event within the ritual process of Jesus who was raised as a Jewish male.
The Gospel writer knew the experience of the Risen Christ as a continuation of the presence of Jesus in life. For teaching purpose, the Gospel writer was telling the story of how the greatness of God as eternal Word became specific in the life of Jesus who was born within a specific human setting and thus fulfilling the regular ritual process of Jewish culture.
The Risen Christ was experienced as holistic health, the very essence of the meaning of salvation.
The holistic health of salvation of the Risen Christ born in the hearts of many was found in the very human name of Christ in history, the name of Jesus.
This name, is the Greek form for the Hebrew yeshua or Joshua, meaning the Lord is Salvation.
The early church in telling the naming story of Jesus were proclaiming that he had lived up to the very meaning of his name.
Jesus, the Christ, was proof that the Lord is salvation. Human wholeness and health in this life and the next is only through identifying completeness with God.
Jesus is the good news that God is so close to humanity as to be humanity in a way that shows us the best way to be human. The best way to be human is to be filled with the Risen Christ and to be more like Jesus.
Let us celebrate the name of Jesus by acting in salutary ways, yes in the very way of what human salvation means in practice. And what does human salvation look like? It is acting in love, justice, faith, kindness, self-control, peace, and reconciliation. And why is this way of living salvation? Because these are the things which last best forever and these are the very best things which can preserve the very best of us.
Today we honor the chief exemplar of human, the one who was given the name Jesus, and the one who helps us achieve salvation living. Amen.
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