What's in a name?
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
January 1, 2022—Holy Name
Phil 2:5-11; I Am Much Too Alone in This World~Rainer Maria Rilke; Luke 2:15-21
Shakespeare surmises that a rose by any other name might well smell as sweet, but in the Bible, names tell you everything. Jacob, the “one who supplants,” fights with his brother, but then wrestles with an angel to become Israel, the father of a nation who “struggles with God.” Sarah laughs at the idea that she will bear a child at her advanced age, and then gives birth to Isaac, “one who laughs.” Simon becomes Peter, “the rock” on whom the church will be built.
And then there’s Jesus, whose name we celebrate today. Yeshua, whose name means “God saves.” Which is amplified by Joseph’s dream, where he is called Emmanuel, “God with us.”
The truth is right there in the holy name(s) of Jesus: God saves us by abiding with us. And the life of Jesus reveals the texture of that abiding, the way that it persists through our best and our very worst times. We so often fear that our bad times define us, fear that they will cause God to turn God’s back on us. The life of Jesus assures us that we are wrong about that.
Jesus come to show us how God saves us by being WITH us. With us, as Jesus was with the people he met while he was here on earth. With the Samaritan woman, who met him at the well and found that he already knew her grievous history of how many husbands she had had and lost. Found that he was willing to listen to her story. Found that he knew that what she needed was the hope that comes from a source of life and power that can endure all of the losses that life can bring.
Jesus comes to show us that God saves us by being WITH us. With us as he was with that woman with the flow of blood who touched him in the crowd, despite the fact that her very presence made everyone unclean. With us as he dined with tax collectors and prostitutes and all those who were considered outside of acceptable society. With us as he was with the religious and political authorities, loving them as he called them back to God’s expansive concern for all. With us as he went through the deepest injustice and suffering that our world can deal out to those who dare to challenge the powers that be.
Yeshua. God saves. Emmanuel. Because God is with us. With us in a way that allows us to bring our whole selves, whether we are outcasts who have been declared untouchable, or the privileged who have lost touch with the law of God. Jesus assures us that God is still with us, raising us up or opening our eyes to see more clearly, depending on our needs. Assures us that we are seen, and not despised. Neither for our lowly state, nor the ways in which we have perhaps become callous and self-centered.
God is with us. God is with us, in a way that means we do not need to be hiding who we are, do not need to be crooked or dishonest or untrue (just as Rilke describes it in his poem). And in many ways, this is the thing saves us. That Jesus allow us to be true, rather than folding ourselves around our pain, or our shame, or our questions and doubts. Jesus invites us to be true, allowing our whole selves to be known and seen and saved by our God.
The holy name of Jesus is “the abiding presence of God with us.” The holy name of Jesus is “salvation.” It’s all right there in the name. The name that describes, that prophesies, that brings things into being.
So … what about you?
If you were to be given a biblical name, what would it be? What significant turning point should be highlighted? What defining quality? What thing that you do, or way that you are in the world would become the name by which you are known in God’s story of salvation?
Or perhaps, I might better ask, what name would God WANT to be able to give you, in the coming year?
It matters. Not just because of what that will make of you, but because of what the effect might be in the world.
In her memoir, Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come, Jessica Pan shares the realization that social life, above all things, is governed by reciprocity. Her friend Nick recalls a trip through Ethiopia: “… and I kept passing all these mothers and children outside of their mud huts. Everybody I passed stared at me like I was dead: totally blank facial expressions. It was the most uncomfortable I’d ever felt in my life.
“But then it occurred to me, while I was sitting there: I was looking at them in exactly the same way they’re looking at me. So I started smiling and waving as I went by—and it was like I flipped a switch. As soon as I started smiling, waving, and looking friendly, they started waving from their windows, grinning at me, and running out of their houses to give me high fives.
“That’s the truth of the world, Jessica,” he says … “Nobody waves, but everybody waves BACK” (42f).
What we put out into the world, more often than not, is what we will get in return. Similarly, what one person does, others will follow suit, multiplying the effect.
We can wave at people, or we can flip them off. We can send out things like bitterness, resentment, and selfishness, or we can send something of Jesus into the world: Something compassionate and brave and generous that will allow others to unfold themselves, to be compassionate and brave and generous in response. Even if we only have a tiny bit of it, it will multiply (like loaves and fishes)!
Nobody waves, but everybody waves back.
So what kind of year is it going to be? What name does God have in mind for you, in God’s dream for 2023? I hope it’s something good. I bet it is. How could it not be, rooted as it is in Jesus, in the God who saves, the God who will continue to be with you through it all? May it be great, my friends, and Happy New Year. Amen.