Sermon for the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ

January 1, 2010, Solemn Mass

by the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Exodus 34:1-8; Psalm 8; Romans 1:1-7; Luke 2:15-21

The naming of Jesus in Luke is not in itself much of a story, especially considering what a long story we have of the naming of John the Baptist.[1] Jesus’ naming is recorded very simply in one verse – 26 words in Greek, 28 when rendered into English – “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.”[2] The much bigger infant event, if you will, for Luke, is still to come, Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, forty days after his birth.[3]

The ordinary meaning of Jesus’ name in New Testament Greek is “God saves,” “God save us” or some variation of “Savior.” That’s the way Matthew and Luke use it. But a different root meaning actually lies behind the word in Hebrew. It’s the word “help.” So the name becomes “God helps,” or the prayer, “God, help us.”[4] I suspect some of those to whom the gospel would have first been preached would have heard Jesus’ name as “help” or as “help” and “savior” – which I think enriches the name and the work Jesus accomplishes. I also think it encourages us to see our kinship and close relationship to each other in and through the One who became flesh.

The theologian Edward Schillebeeckx died two days before Christmas, on December 23, without his death being reported by any of the major American newspapers. He was 95.

Schillebeeckx was among the most influential and famous theologians of the last sixty years. He was a Flemish Dominican. Three times during the 1980s he was summoned to Rome to be examined for heresy by Joseph Ratzinger. He was never found guilty of heresy, but having to defend himself repeatedly meant an enormous commitment of time and energy that took him away from writing and teaching– which perhaps was the whole point of what Ratzinger was up to when he summoned Schillebeeckx him to Rome, again and again and again.

As a theologian Schillebeeckx was enormously influential across denominational lines. In the United States, he first came to widespread attention when his book Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God was published in 1963.[5]

For the pre-Vatican II Roman Church, his work challenged Christians to remember that the relationship between God and people is intensely personal and close. God’s goodness, holiness and transforming presence were mediated in sacramental rites, but these rites had meaning and reality because God has a real personal relationship with human beings and because we human beings have a real personal relationship with each other. It was a perspective that seems normative to many of us today, but was jarring to a great many people when he wrote. He saw sacraments as meetings with Jesus Christ as Lord and Jesus Christ present in other people, other members of his Body.

Schillebeeckx’s two major works were called Jesus: An Experiment in Christology[6] and Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord.[7] Both volumes are tough going. Jesus is the volume I know better. I suspect Schillebeeckx got in trouble with Ratzinger because he thought the experience of Christ was more fundamental than the experience of the Church – and that Christ was really present to all.

I’m not a serious student of systematic theology, but my sense is that Schillebeeckx was an incarnational theologian – radical about God becoming Man, radical about the experience that anyone who encountered the earthly Jesus when he lived among us, radical about encountering the Lord Jesus as Word, radical about meeting him through people who can share his presence.

Back to the baby, back to his name – save, help.

Jesus’ naming was at once a past, present and future act. As son of Mary he is a child of the Hebrew people, fulfilling the hope of the prophets and of history for one who saves, one who helps.

As son of God, he dies and rises so that humankind may have eternal life. As the ascended Christ, he brings this past and present to us through the Holy Spirit so that we may turn our lives to the purposes God has for us in our present and our future.

The writers of the New Testament use the Hebrew Scriptures, the record of God’s work among the people of Israel, to help the descendents of Abraham be open to meeting Jesus. One way for us to look at our individual pasts and the pasts of our church communities is to be honest about where we have been and what we have done. In some way, looking at the past seems to give us new space to see God at work in our lives now.

When we have cause to look back in our lives, I think it should be so that we can move forward in new ways. So that we may encounter Jesus, who was born, died and rose so that we might live.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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