The Rev. Matthew Wright
The Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ - January 1, 2020
Numbers 6:22-27
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 2:15-21
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Now the word translated in this passage as “LORD” is actually the unspeakable Hebrew Name of God, the Tetragrammaton, or the letters Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (YHVH), sometimes pronounced by Christians as Yahweh, but traditionally never uttered by Jews. And so when the Name had to be spoken, it was replaced instead with Adonai, Lord, as a way of pointing to or speaking the Unspeakable. And it’s even been said by some of the rabbis that this name of God is actually the sound of the breath, and that this is why it’s essentially unspeakable, because we are actually speaking and carrying the name of God on every breath.
And so today’s feast holds, and celebrates, this tension between naming and the Unnameable, between saying and unsaying, which is a paradox that lies at the heart of all mysticism—how do we speak of the Unspeakable?
Now the name Jesus itself is a translation of the Greek Iesous, which, of course, is not the name his parents actually gave him. Most scholars assume that name would have been the Aramaic Yeshua, a shortened form of Yehoshua or, in English, Joshua. And etymologically that name, it begins with Yah, pointing to YHVH, the Unnameable, and it ends with shua, which can be traced to the verb meaning “to rescue” or “save” or to the noun for “a saving cry” or “a salvation shout.” And so this name itself holds the tension we’re speaking of—Yah, YHVH, the Unspeakable, speaks, cries out, shouts, to save us.
And salvation in the biblical languages is connected to the word for healing or wholeness. “Your faith has saved you” can also be translated “your faith has made you whole.” And so again, Yah-shua—the Unspeakable, present in our very breath, is our wholeness. A name pointing to the Nameless. This entire Christmas season is about the unfolding of this paradox—that somehow, in Jesus, the Unspeakable is spoken, the Infinite becomes finite—and that reality continues unfolding and deepens today when the Unnameable, for our sakes, takes on a name.
This paradox between saying and unsaying, naming and unnaming, is captured beautifully in an early Christian text called The Gospel of Philip, which was probably written in the late 2nd century—too late to be given canonical status, but a window into what early contemplative Christians were contemplating. It’s not a Gospel in the traditional sense of telling the story of Jesus; instead, it’s a collection of Christian mystical teachings. And in it, we’re given these somewhat shocking words:
“The words we give to earthly realities engender illusion, they turn the heart away from the real to the Unreal. The one who hears the word God does not think of what really exists, but a concept or an image of the Real. The same for the words Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Life and Light, the Resurrection and the Church, and all the rest. By these words we are made to think not of what exists, but of what does not exist, though these things could point to what really exists.”A powerful early Christian reminder that all our words, including God, are simply pointers. Which means that there’s always the risk that we will mistake the pointers for Reality itself, and that we’ll end up worshiping our own mental constructs rather than the living God. And so Philip here, rather mercilessly, rips all of our words away from us—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Life, Light, and Church!
But then, after his demolition project, with great tenderness, he gives them all back to us; the passage continues: “But Truth brought names into the world for our sake, and one cannot refer to Truth without names. Truth is one, but its names are many for our sake, to teach us lovingly this one thing through many things.”
Today we celebrate this great mystery that the Unnameable took a name for our sake: “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus…” Now this text always pairs in my mind with another, and since I’ve already brought in The Gospel of Philip I might as well bring in The Gospel of Thomas, which is simply an early collection of sayings of Jesus. And one of the sayings goes like this, “Jesus said, ‘A person old in age will not hesitate in asking an infant, seven days old, about the Place of Life, and will find life.’”
Here we have someone at one end of life going to someone at the other end—at the beginning—in order to discover (or remember) what life’s about. And significantly, Jesus says that this is “an infant, seven days old.” “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child…” “A person old in age will not hesitate in asking an infant, seven days old…” A child seven days old is still in the state before naming, before taking on religious identity—in that original freshness, straight from God. And so when we hold these two texts together, we see this delicate dance between naming and unnaming, the seventh day and the eighth day. On the eighth day, Jesus, for our sakes, takes on a name… and then the Named One points us back, to the one seven days old, to the Nameless. We say, and we unsay. We name and we un-name. This is the great mystical paradox.
But today we celebrate and give thanks for the naming. Today the Nameless takes a name, Jesus. And I think that this is perhaps not only for our sakes, but for the sake of the Nameless as well. There is a need, a longing, flowing in both directions. The Nameless, I believe, delights in taking on a name—in taking on all these names [gesturing to the congregation]. “So they shall put my Name on my people.” And while the Nameless delights in being named, we are invited into the delight and fullness found in returning to the Nameless, to silence, to the breath.
And the Name of Jesus holds this paradox, open wide in both directions—Yah!—the Unspeakable—shouts salvation! The Name of Jesus, paired with the breath, is of course one of the Church’s earliest prayers—what we usually call the Jesus Prayer. It’s most common form today is “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” but in its earliest forms it seems to have simply been the name itself: Yeshua, Jesus, God saves, the Unspeakable makes whole.
St. John Chrysostom wrote in the 4th century of this prayer:
“The name of the Lord Jesus Christ, descending into the depths of the heart, will subdue the serpent holding sway over the pastures of the heart, and will save our soul and bring it to life. Thus abide constantly with the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that the heart swallows the Lord and the Lord the heart, and the two become one.”And the two become One. The Nameless and the Named become One. And so I invite you in the brief silence that follows this sermon, to breathe the Name of Jesus. I learned the Jesus Prayer in a very simple form from Sr. Helena Marie of the Community of the Holy Spirit—simply breathing in “Jesus” on the in-breath, and breathing out “Mercy,” on the out-breath. Breathing in the love held in that name, breathing out mercy and compassion for all creation. If this form of the prayer calls to you, or if you’re drawn to or familiar with another, take a few moments with it now, breathing in this amazing reality: that today the Unnameable takes a name for our sake, and delights in placing the Divine Name on each one of us.
Amen.
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