The Feast of the Holy Name

The Feast of the Holy Name
A Sermon preached at St. Luke's Church
by The Rev. James B. Craven III
on Holy Name Sunday, 01 January 2006

In the name of God - Father, Son & Holy Spirit. Amen
    Those of us with Y chromosomes in our genetic makeup may be forgiven for having heard the gospel today from Luke with perhaps more feeling than our XX colleagues:

And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

    From the year 567, through the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, down through the 1928 edition, to 1979, that’s 1412 years if you’re still with me, January 1 on the church calendar was known as the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. In the 1979 book, the one we use now, it was changed to the Feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The explanation given in the scholarly Commentary on the American Prayer Book is that:

The change from a commemoration of circumcision to that of the Holy Name in the present revision represents a more accurate understanding of the significance of the gospel passage traditionally associated with this day.

    That’s a pretty lame explanation, since neither circumcision nor the naming of Jesus are mentioned or even alluded to until the last sentence of today’s gospel passage from Luke. Nor is it mentioned that the group which revised the prayer book in 1979 was awfully top-heavy male, an explanation which makes as much sense as anything else
        Suppose you are God, 4000 years ago. You have created this unruly bunch, humankind, whose community response to seemingly every gift you bestow on them is rank disobedience, coupled with the cry of “But what have you done for us lately?” Something is needed, something to bind this group together, an identifying mark of some sort. Why not a laminated membership card in The Chosen People, Ltd.? A secret grip or password? A nice lapel pin? No, God, like Ford, had a better idea, circumcision. Say what?
        I was invited to a bris once, the same ritual circumcision practiced in modern day Judaism, eight days after the birth of a baby boy, in this case the son of a rabbi. When I got there I heard some folks talking about the Yankee Clipper, so I thought this occasion might have other possibilities. I began searching the crowd for him, but sadly Joe DiMaggio was not there. The Yankee Clipper was the moel, a fellow from Baltimore who travels the circuit doing religious circumcisions. The house was packed for the ceremony and it was one of those brutally hot days in August. The next thing I knew I was stretched out on my back in the front yard, with the two little girls who had also fainted. So I can’t really speak to the liturgy of circumcision. In the gospel account we are spared the details. We are simply told that the baby was circumcised and named Jesus, the name the angels gave him at the annunciation. It was the great mystery of all the ages:

Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God…You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus…And Mary said, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?”

    And when it was explained to her, after a fashion, Mary said “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.” In other words, I really don’t understand it, but if you say so, you are God and I am not. Remember that Mary was a teenager. She learned very early that lesson many of us who are much older still struggle with, that God is in charge of all this and I am not.
    “What’s in a name?” as Juliet asked Romeo. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” And Romeo agrees, “Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized.” Well a name is important. Why was the Boston bar in Cheers so popular? Because “everybody knows your name.” Psalm 8 begins and ends with “O Lord, our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world.” In the baptismal rite we don’t just say “I baptize you in the name of the Father,” and so on, we say “Olivia Hope (my granddaughter), I baptize you.” Remember how anxious Moses was to learn the name of the divine being. “But who shall I say sent me?” Tell them I am sent you. I am who I am.” In the Old Testament references to circumcision, there is no naming rite associated with it. That changes with the baby Jesus at Bethlehem.
    A name is powerful, particularly in the old world. I began this homily, as I almost always do, “In the name of God.” We go forth from the liturgy this morning “in the name of Christ.” We ask “when in the name of God” is peace going to come and stay. We sing “O come, o come, Emmanuel” and “Christ is made the sure foundation.” We acknowledge with heartfelt gratitude that “Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult.” Our Hebrew ancestors dared not speak the name of the Lord, but we invoke the name of Jesus all the time. All the time, but not routinely. We even say the Jesus prayer, a meditative exercise, saying over and over, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
    When our children were born, Sara and I decided what to name them - Jamie, Joe and Will. With the holy family though, it was different. Mary and Joseph didn’t have to come up with a name. The angel of God had told Mary she was to name her son Jesus. We don’t typically name boys Jesus, but Jesus is very common in Latino cultures. Jesus in Aramaic means “God saves” or “he who saves.” We did not know it then, in Bethlehem eight days after Jesus’ birth, but we learned later and are learning that still today at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth, and that it is no longer circumcision, but the holy name of Jesus that is the sign of our salvation. In the words of the hymn, All hail the power of Jesus’ name. In his holy name we pray. Amen.

St. Luke’s
01 January 2006