The Feast of the Holy Name: Christmas, Continued

Grace Episcopal Church, Madison NJ
January 1, 2009

The Holy Name of Our Lord
Exodus 34:1-8
Psalm 8
Romans 1:1-7
Luke 2:15-21

The Feast of the Holy Name: Christmas, Continued

Well, happy New Year! As the rest of society sleeps off last night’s partying, or happily turns the page on what was a pretty bleak year, or maybe starts getting used to writing ’09 on their checks, here we are… in church.

While the rest of society focuses a little blearily on the start of a new year, the Church, maybe also a little bleary-eyed, celebrates the Feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord.

It’s the Feast of the Holy Name… but it’s also still Christmas. And what we celebrate on this feast day is very much a continuation of what we celebrated on Christmas. We celebrate the revelation of God in Jesus. God comes into the world in a new and decisive way in that helpless child whose birth we celebrated a little more than a week ago.

Today is Christmas, continued.

According to the Law of Moses on the eighth day all Jewish male newborns are to be circumcised and officially be given their names. And so we just heard the brief account in Luke’s Gospel that tells us that the Messiah was circumcised and was given his name: what was then the relatively common name of Yeshua – Joshua – Jesus in Greek. The Messiah is given a name which means savior or deliverer.
And so the revelation of Christmas continues. God comes into the world in this helpless child – a helpless child who will grow up and be our savior; who will grow up and deliver us from sin and death.

It turns out that, by Christian standards, this not a particularly ancient feast. The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus “only” goes back to the late middle ages. Long-time Episcopalians may remember that today used to be called the Feast of the Circumcision. But although this feast, by Christian standards, is not very ancient, the fact is that right from the start of Christianity the name of Jesus was seen as very important. The name of Jesus was essentially synonymous with the person of Jesus.

We hear the importance and power of Jesus’ name in the opening of Paul’s letter to the Romans where he writes, “…Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name…”

This idea that Jesus’ name was seen as essentially synonymous with Jesus himself seems a little odd to us, doesn’t it? We may not make a big fuss about names today, but in the ancient world it was a big deal to tell someone your name. By telling someone your name you revealed something very personal about yourself. Nowadays, I guess we feel that way about our Social Security number, but not our name. I’m happy to tell you my name. My name is no big deal.
I suppose most parents give a lot of thought to the name they choose for their children. And we either like the names we are given or we don’t. A very few of us dislike our names so much that we change them – but I guess after a while most of us don’t really give our names much thought.

In my case, I was named for three Thomases – my father and both of my grandfathers. I like that, but never really given much thought to it. Sometimes, though, I’ve wished I had a more distinctive name. Believe me, there are many Tom Murphys out there! I’ve actually met people who didn’t like some other Tom Murphy and had to try not to transfer those negative feelings toward me. Believe it or not, there was another Tom Murphy ordained in another diocese right around the same time I was. We even accidentally received each other’s General Ordination Exam scores! A few weeks ago in Shop Rite the cashier saw my name and asked if I had grown up in Springfield. I said, no, I wasn’t that Tom Murphy. And he said, yeah, I guess not, that Tom Murphy had red hair!
However, I had an experience this summer that got me thinking about the importance of our name and the significance of revealing, or not revealing, our name with someone else.

For three days this past summer I attended a daily Eucharist at a prominent Episcopal church in California. Each day there were about five or six other people at the service. On the first day I was there, after the service on my way out I introduced myself to the priest. I said something like, “Hi, I’m Tom Murphy. I’m a priest visiting from the Diocese of Newark…” The priest welcomed me, asked how my trip was going, was very pleasant - but he didn’t tell me his name.
The next day I went back. There was a different priest. At the end of the service, same thing: I greeted the priest, and told him my name and where I was from. This priest did the same thing – once again very nice, cordial – but he didn’t tell me his name.

The third day I went back and it was the priest from the first day. As I was leaving, I reintroduced myself, telling him my name again. And once again he didn’t tell me his name!

Now, I don’t want to make too much of these incidents. But it really bugged me that I told these priests my name and they wouldn’t tell me theirs. The fact that this bothered me so much tells me that maybe our names are a big deal and maybe choosing to reveal our names is a bigger deal than I had thought.

And if our names are important, just how much more important must be the name of Jesus?

I never really gave much thought to the name of Jesus until I arrived at General Seminary four years ago. Remember, I grew up Roman Catholic in the 1970s and 1980s – the age of a simplified, folk music liturgy, the age of guitar-playing nuns leading us in song, the age of “Kumbaya”. Jesus was depicted as our groovy, bearded, sandal-wearing friend. It’s easy to make fun of now, but in a lot of ways it was a great time, and I think many of us felt close to Jesus, but we didn’t exactly show reverence to Jesus or his Name. And we certainly didn’t bow our heads whenever the Holy Name of Jesus was mentioned!

In fact it wasn’t until I went to General Seminary that I regularly saw people bowing their heads in the chapel whenever Jesus’ name was mentioned. At first, to be honest, I thought this was a kind of silly overly-pious affectation. But the more I thought about it, I came to see the bowing as a sign, as a physical reminder that, in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, the once relatively common name of “Jesus” is holy – it is other, it is higher than all other names because Jesus himself is holy, Jesus is the revelation of God, God made flesh.

And so today, the Feast of the Holy Name is Christmas, continued. In Christmas we celebrate the revelation of God in this child named Jesus who is our savior and deliverer.

And Christmas is really part of a long story stretching all the way back to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Christmas is part of a story of God reaching out to men and women, revealing God’s self to us, letting us know what God expects of us and how much God loves us.

God reveals God’s self to Moses and on Christmas God reveals God’s self once and for all in the savior named Jesus.

Our job today - no matter how bleary-eyed we are - is to take a moment and give thanks for the Holy Name of Jesus. And then we are to go out and live lives that reveal God’s presence and love to the world.

Now it’s our turn to be part of Christmas, continued.

Amen.