Sermon – The Feast of the Holy Name, January 1, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Do you know the story of your name? Many of us do. Maybe like my five-year-old Murray, you were named for a grandparent whose birthday was the day you were due. Maybe like me, you were given one of the few boys’ names with a nickname that you could keep forever, so that there would never be a day when, as every Timmy becomes a Tim and every Jimmy becomes a Jim, I would have to switch from Greggy to Greg. Maybe it was part of a trend—maybe you were a girl born in the year 1960 and so your name had to be Debbie, Deborah, or Deb; maybe you were a boy born in 2018, when Aiden, Caden, Jayden, and Braden all made the top 20.

Or maybe it was something more normal than that. Maybe an angel of the Lord appeared to each of your parents individually as they planned for their wedding day and told them that they were to name you Jesus, (Luke 1:31, Matthew 1:21) “for [you would] save [your] people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21) And so you were “called Jesus, the name given by the angel before [you were] conceived in the womb.” (Luke 2:21) Or something like that.

Today we celebrate a holiday that falls on January 1 every year. Not New Year’s Day, although many of us may also be celebrating that, but a rather less popular one: the Feast of the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the eighth day of Jesus’ life, we join the Holy Family for his bris, for the ritual of circumcision and naming that had been a part of the life of the people of God since the earliest days, since the times of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

A name is an important thing. Most people carry it with them their whole lives. And in our culture, the meaning of a name itself is often somewhat obscure; it’s the sort of thing you look up in a book. But that’s only because English is a pirate language, full of words stolen from other languages. And in those languages, names mean something. “Gregory” is Greek for “watchful.” “Dorothy” is Greek for “the Gift of God.” “Jane” is the Anglicization of Jeanne, which is the French form of Joanna, which is the medieval Latin feminine form of Johannes, which is the Greek form of Yochanan, which means, in Hebrew, “the Lord is gracious.”

And “Jesus” means, “the Lord is help.” And Jesus means, “Salvation.”

“Jesus,” like many of these names, has gone through a bit of a transformation. “Jesus” is that Latin version of the Greek version of the Hebrew and Aramaic name Yeshua, which is itself a contraction of the older Hebrew name Yehoshua. You can almost hear how “Yehoshua” would become “Joshua,” just like “Yehochanan” became “Yohanan” became “Johan” or “John,” and “Yehonatan” became “Yonatan” became “Jonathan.” “Yeho” in each of these names is the name of God: not the generic term “God” but the specific name of a specific God, the four-letter name YHWH, considered too holy by observant Jews to be spoken aloud. This is the name that you’ll see translated sometimes in the Old Testament with the words, “the LORD,” with LORD in those funny small-caps.

But Jesus’ name is a bit of a pun. Because while “Yehoshua” means “God is salvation,” “Yeshua”—its contraction—sounds an awful lot like the Hebrew word meaning “salvation.” It’s literally the difference between יְשׁוּעָה and יֵשׁוּעַ, and if you can hear or understand that distinction then God just may be calling you to a deeper study of Proto-North-West-Semitic philology.

So “Jesus” means “God is salvation.” And Jesus also means “salvation.” Which means, in a sense, that Jesus, who is salvation, is God, who is salvation.

This isn’t, strictly speaking, the way logic works. But it is the way symbolism works. And it explains the enigmatic comment that the angel makes to Joseph: you will call him Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sins.” You will call him “Salvation,” because he will save them. And it’s possible that even the word “save” isn’t quite right here; it’s probably something closer to “help.” The most respected Hebrew lexicon I have glosses the name “Yehoshua” as “The Lord is help.” Jesus is not just “salvation,” in an abstract or theological sense. Jesus is help. And maybe this connects with you more. Because while you may not always feel like you are in need of salvation, you probably sometimes feel like you need some help.

Believe it or not, there’s much more that I could say about the name “Jesus” or “Yehoshua”—about the great prophet Joshua, lieutenant of Moses, who finally led his people out of their wanderings in the wilderness and into the Promised Land; about the great high priest Joshua, the anointed one who rebuilt the Temple and whom the prophet Zechariah depicts as a semi-messianic figure being accused by Satan—but I regret to say that I’m going to leave it here, instead, with a simple questions.

Where in your life do you need help this year? And how can Jesus be a “help” to you? On January 1, many of us are making resolutions and setting goals in a new year. Does it help to know that there is a God who has sent the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide you as you struggle along the way? Many of us are trying to leave behind the patterns of the past, and start off fresh. Does it help you to know that there is a God who will forgive you more easily than you’ll forgive yourself for all your failings? Many of us are cold or tired or sick, trying to make it through one more day, one more week, one more month. And God has been there; in the Jesus whose birth we still celebrate during these twelve days of Christmas, we know that God has been there, and is there, right alongside us; that the God whose name is “Help” has helped us and he helps us still, because he walked among us and he lives among us even now in the one who “was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”

Sermon — Christmas Day, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Sermon — Christmas Eve, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

When Prince George was born in July 2013, the news of a new heir to the United Kingdom scored two photos above the fold on the front page of the Washington Post. The LA Times ran the headline “The prince of wails has arrived.” (That’s “wails” as in a “wailing baby.”) Our own Boston Globe, faithful to our city’s history of revolution and Irishness, placed the story on page A3, with a small photo beneath the fold on the front page, news of the future King George having been trumped by the story of a BSO conductor’s concussion and one about salmon in the Penobscot River. But if you want to know what the British media thought, you can look up the cover of the British tabloid The Sun (S-U-N), which, on the day that Prince George was born, actually redesigned its logo so that the name of the magazine itself read: “The Son” (S-O-N).

This, of course, is all old news; the young king-to-be is now some nine and a half years old. But my point is this: when a long-expected royal heir is born, it’s big news. You need someone in charge of public relations, for sure: to keep the paparazzi at bay, to take some cute photos of the new baby, maybe to put some makeup on his dad so he looks presentable. What you don’t usually need is for your royal PR firm to go drum up a little publicity from the shepherds in the fields.

But Jesus was no ordinary king, and his birth was no ordinary royal birth. And if that angel of the Lord had not appeared to those shepherds, and if that choir of angels had not praised him with a song, no one but his parents would have known he existed at all.

The story of Christmas, after all, is a story of glad tidings in unexpected places.

The people are eager for a king, for a Messiah, for a Savior who will lead them out of the dark days they’re living through and into a brighter and more glorious age. They even know where to look: in Bethlehem, the city of David, the ancestral home of their most famous king. The prophets had long foretold that a new Messiah would arise from Bethlehem, and you have to imagine that every pregnant woman in that small town wondered from time to time: could this be the one?

Nobody was expecting a child born in Bethlehem to parents from out of town. And they certainly weren’t expecting the Messiah to be born in a barn. Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem by coincidence, and Jesus was born in obscurity, and they wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, and the story could well have ended there.

But God wanted somebody to know, and so an angel of the Lord appeared, again in an unexpected place. The angel didn’t appear in Herod’s palace, telling him that it’s time to retire because there’s a new king in town. The angel didn’t appear in the Temple, telling the people that their God ha come to save them at last. The angel didn’t appear in the sky over the city, announcing good news to the expectant crowds. No, the angel appeared to a handful of shepherds lying in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night, and they were terrified and amazed. And then the angel disappeared.

These are “good tidings of great joy that will be for all the people,” but only these shepherds have heard the tale.

God shows up in unexpected places. God shows up in the prayers we say when we’re not sure we believe there’s anyone listening. God shows up in the acts of human love that are around us every day, but will never make the front page of the news. God does show up in the moments of joy that fill the Christmas season, but God also shows up in the pain that’s sometimes present, too. God shows up in surprising places here, on earth, in the midst of our lives, however messy and imperfect they may be, reminding us again and again that God loves with an unconditional and unimaginable love.

God sometimes even shows up here in church.

So if God shows up in your life, sometime soon, where will you be in the story?

Will you be “keeping watch” with your flock by night? Will you be paying attention, in other words? Will you even notice that God is there? Will you be watching and listening for the signs of what God is doing in your life, or will you be, like I usually am, too caught up in your own preoccupations to hear the angels sing?

But if you do notice God’s sudden appearance, what will you do? Will you go with the shepherds “even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing that has taken place?” Will you “treasure” these things like Mary, “pondering them in your heart?” Will you accept the invitation, in other words, and follow that feeling of God’s grace where it leads? Or will it become a half-remembered story of the past, an extraordinary moment that has no effect on ordinary life?

And what will you do when that angel of the Lord has disappeared? Will you “return” out into the world, “glorifying and praising God for all that [you have] heard and seen?” Will you share the good news of what God has done in your life with the people around you, or will God be the best-kept secret in your life, something known only to few cold shepherds in the field?

Whatever the answer is, there is good news. However attentive or distracted you are; however curious or careless you may be; however much you share that good news or pretend it never happened, God is always here, working. There were thirty years, after all, between Jesus’ birth and the next time anybody outside his family noticed him; but everywhere he went, God was among us, all the same.

God is among us, working in us, and through us, even now, in places we come looking for God and in places we’d never think to find him, comforting us and inspiring us and above all else, loving us and saving us, casting down all the power of evil and death in this world, and freeing us to live in love.

So may God bless you in this season of Christmas, and whatever Christmas brings, may it be a time of surprising moments of joy.

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Amen.