Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randall Greve, OHC
Feast of the Holy Name - Friday, January 1, 2021
Our parents, most parents, say that they want their newborn to become whoever they are, for this little baby boy or girl to grow up into their unique self, free to create a life of their own choosing. They’re lying. At least partially. Parents also come pre-programmed with all kinds of fantasies and plans for us. Unfulfilled dreams, family businesses, gender roles, to name but a few.
“What is the meaning of your name?” We are inheritors through the given-ness of biology (nobody asked me if I wanted to be born) a name that gives us the first understanding of an identity, a people, a place. Our name can be a gift or a curse, or some complex mixture as we navigate the journey of knowing what this inheritance means and making our own choices on the way to becoming individuals. We become adults with the dream of becoming whoever we want to be, and then find out we have already been socialized in ways that do not change easily, if ever. I sketched out what little I knew about my name. My paternal grandfather was James Richard and my father is James Richard, Jr. I am James Randall. My grandmother suggested the change. Did she want to forget about her husband who left her and my father? Forget, but retain some remnant of connection to him, to a past I would never know? The name is half old and half new, connected to the past, yet original. Perhaps more interesting than I thought – more questions than answers.
The naming of Jesus also contains a harmony of history and promise, ordinariness and uniqueness. We are in the passage between Christmas Day and the Epiphany. The Naming of Jesus bridges the seasons of incarnation and unveiling. A baby has been born whose identity was announced and is now embraced in the acts of Mary and Joseph. From Annunciation to New Heaven and New Earth, though he is born, grows, dies, is raised, and ascends to heaven, the name of Jesus is consistent. In the Gospels the Lord is called Jesus almost six hundred times. He was not an ethereal idea or morality dispenser, but a man with a name, flesh and blood, born of a woman called Mary, born within the religion of the Jewish law, under Roman occupation. In Luke’s Gospel, the visit from Gabriel at the Annunciation is focused on communicating to Mary the identity of the child to be born. The first thing the angel says is, “… and you will name him Jesus, (which means ‘Yahweh saves’).” The name contains the identity. Only after the name is given does Gabriel go on to say he will be a great Son, an eternal successor to King David’s throne. So on the eighth day, today, at the appointed time for his circumcision, according to Gabriel’s instruction, the baby is named Jesus.
In the reading from the letter to the Philippians, St. Paul also puts emphasis on the name of Jesus. He is either quoting a hymn that may have already been circulating or crafting one of the most evocative and powerful passages in the epistles, either way the reading encompasses the whole cosmic drama, connecting Christ’s humble incarnation in Bethlehem with the end toward which that event points and promises, the regathering of all creation into union with the crucified and risen Christ for eternity. The image of final reconciliation is bending the knee to the name – all that is contained in it - the Christ who was, and is, and is to come. His name, the fullness of his identity and presence, is the only name worthy of the bending of every knee and the acknowledgment of every tongue.
We again glory in the mystery that the same Jesus whose being spans across eternity becomes flesh, enters into time, in the rough, poor, oppressed, and anxious people of Jesus’ earthly life. Perhaps some stories were whispered in Nazareth about a virgin birth and angels and dreams, but many would have regarded Jesus as one more Jewish carpenter’s son from Nazareth, just like many before and after. Jesus, who has been given a name, comes to understand the nature of his identity. In his ministry he is faced with the task of being faithful to his name and resisting the ways others seek to exploit and manipulate him. In a culture where conformity, rule-keeping, and avoiding the wrath of the Romans were the difference between life and death, God incarnate is trouble, and not everyone likes where this is going. This man, who was known in Nazareth, is different. The offense comes early and sharply. “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” “Where did this man get all of this?” Many apparently could not hear what he was saying because they thought they already knew who he was.
Jesus would not be tamed, whether by his disciples, the Jewish authorities, the Romans, or even his family. In Mark chapter three, when Jesus is teaching and is told his relatives are outside calling for him, he says, “Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!’ Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” And just like that he has upended all the familial and social norms and has revolutionized human relationship. In his name, his identity, is our own identity as well. The name Jesus radiates out into all the world to unveil to us that we are brothers, that family is more than flesh and blood, and that we are invited into a home that is bigger and more wonderful than we could have imagined. The old boundaries of clan and status and race that have hidden the dark corners of bigotry and prejudice have had the name of Jesus shine into them and shown them in all their raw evil. The naming of Jesus means new family for all.
Yet the spiritual forces of evil that sought to label Jesus, tame and manage him, are still doing their work. He is still used as a prop for nationalism, an advocate for materialism, a weapon to fuel religious bigotry. “Othering” in the name of Jesus is a popular form of de-naming him. He is no longer Jesus of Nazareth, but Jesus of my group, my agenda, my empire. Let us beware and refute the temptation to so profane the name of Jesus by labeling those whom he called brothers and sisters as ugly or dangerous or expendable. Being prophetic need not be some grand dramatic protest or march. It is as easy as seeing and loving a person, a unique and precious person, rather than my designation of who they are. We claim the name of Jesus for ourselves when we renounce those forces just as he did. By calling ourselves Christians, “little Christs”, we are carries of the name Jesus. And that means the barriers are torn down and we wake up to being brother and sister to each other.
In Mark chapter ten, Jesus says, “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields – with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life.” May God give us the grace to seek and serve Christ in one another, our brothers and sisters, joined together in unity in reverence to Jesus in whose birth we are born, in whose glory we are glorified, in whose name we have a name. Amen.
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