Christmas, 2017

John 1:1-18

I was named after my father. My name is Donald Joseph, and my Father's was John Donald. He in turn was named after his father, whose name was John Silas. We named our son Donald John and threw in the name Matthew as well giving him a choice about what he wanted to call himself. And it's interesting to find out why people were given the names they have. Some people spend a lot of energy drawing up names for their children. I had an Uncle and Aunt who named each of their five children with a name that began with M. I don't know why, maybe they just liked that letter better than the other 25. And I'm sure everyone knows someone whose first name seems to have been selected to go with the family name – Like the movie star Rip Torn. And what do we do with names? Many people make a conscious choice to be called something else; I know several people who have chosen to go by their middle name, and even when they sign their name the first name is remembered by a letter. Names are random sounds and at the same time they take on meaning from the person who is given the name. Names resonate with connections. After World War II, the rather common name “Adolph” became extremely rare for quite a while. And I suspect few babies, at least in liberal Massachusetts, will be named Donald for many years.

The gospel of Luke has the familiar story of the annunciation, in which Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear a son and is to name him Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew an angel appears to Joseph and tells him the same thing, to name this child Jesus.

The name Yashwah was not unusual among the Hebrews. The successor of Moses, who actually led the Israelites into the promised land, had the same name – only we pronounce it Joshua. Other variations we meet in scripture include Jesse and Joses. But Jesus did not get his name from his parents, it came by way of angels directly from God, and God doesn't do anything frivolously; The Son he sent in to the world could have no other name.

Yashwah means “God saves”. I think we all would agree that this is an appropriate name, after all, we Christians believe that God became a human being to save us. But sometimes we ask, how does that happen? Fathers and doctors of the Church have come up with different ideas. They all seem to revolve around the idea that Jesus pays off a debt that we could never pay off, or that Jesus offers his life to his Father in place of our lives. Salvation seems to be a transaction. But I think the names of Jesus may suggest something different.

Another name for Jesus is found in the first part of the Gospel of John, where he is called “Word”.

A very unusual thing about human beings is that our minds are formed by words. The theologian Hans Urs Von Balthazar wrote: “After a Mother has smiled for a long time at her child, the child will begin to smile back; she has awakened love in its heart, and in awakening love in its heart, she awakes also recognition.” But of course the other thing a mother does is speak words to the child, who through those words begins to recognize that he is not alone, that he is loved, that he belongs. We know of situations where children were raised without words, and the result is that if they attempt to learn their language as teens or young adults they never achieve normal socialization, and in fact never become very fluent. To be without words is to be isolated, lonely and incapable of fully participating in our human society.

And maybe that's what Jesus as the Word is all about. We human beings, even when we have families, even when we have loving relationships, eventually realize that nothing is permanent, nothing lasts forever; our assumptions are shaken to the core. I recently talked with a friend who had just had a heart attack. It was mild, he had stents placed, he was back to normal a few days later. But he was totally shaken; he said he had to re-evaluate everything, having had a personal brush with death. And he is a man of faith.

Jesus as the Word of God is like a mother's words that begin the process of bringing a baby into his full humanity; The Word of God tells us that we do not need to fear, there is meaning in the world, there is a plan for each of us. The Word of God calls us out beyond the fear, darkness, and chaos that prevents us from entering the world of self-expression, thought, and conscious love. The Word of God calls us into a relationship which is the end of being alone, being frightened, being at the mercy of the world, our own bodies, and other people.

When we respond to the Word that is part of what is meant by being saved; we've been made free from the limitations our human condition puts upon us, and from the ultimate limitation, which is death. Because the third name for Jesus is the name given by the prophet Isaiah, who said that a virgin would bear a child and his name would be called Emmanuel, God with us. And when we realize that God is with us, that he is closer to us than our own heart, that he will never withdraw his love, than we can say with Paul, “If God is with us, who can be against us?” and “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

Jesus …..Jesus ….Jesus. When God names something, it becomes what God has named it. And there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.

Go forth today breathing the name Jesus on this day we celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Fourth Sunday of Advent, cycle B

Luke 1:26-38

I visit with a man now and then who had a massive stroke at the age of 55. He can barely walk, can't use one arm, and can't really take care of himself. His mind was not affected. He's a man of faith, and even though he's in an assisted living facility, He has organized a bible study and rolls around on his wheel chair visiting the other people in the place. If you talk to him long enough, he'll tell you that he sees his situation as a blessing. He believes that God loves him, and put him in this situation, in these circumstances, for a reason. And if that is what God wants, that's what he wants.

Whenever we Catholics say the Hail Mary, we repeat the words the angel speaks to her in this gospel story – of course the original story was in Greek, so whether we hear the words differently in the gospel just read or in the Hail Mary isn't important. They are just translations.

But we call Mary blessed. The angel calls her “favored one”. Sort of the same thing. And most of us would see a relationship between being blessed and having good things happen to us, or at least avoiding bad things. But I wonder how blessed Mary felt when she learned that God was going to overshadow her and bring about a pregnancy; a child conceived out of wedlock. What would Joseph think. What would the people of the little village think? What would happen to her? And I wonder how blessed she felt when she saw her son crucified like a common criminal. And you could probably think of other times Mary wondered whether being God's favorite was worth it? I think that's something to take to our own prayers. For Mary and for you and I, there is no obvious relationship between good fortune and being one of God's favored ones.

So what does being favored mean? We can go back in salvation history and look at the favored ones. There was Abraham, whose life God upended – Abraham who was told to leave his country and wander in foreign lands. Abraham who seemed destined never to have children and then when God finally brought that about, he was told to sacrifice that child. Abraham who died with no sign that God was keeping his promise that he would become a great nation. Or Moses, whom God called from his life as a herdsman raising a family in Moab, to confront the Pharoah of Egypt. Moses who was given the task of leading a people through the desert and who cried out for God to take his life because the people he was trying to lead kept rebelling. Moses who after all those years was denied actually entering into the land God had reserved for the Israelites. Or think of Jonah, who tried to run away when God told him to preach repentance to the Ninevites, and ended up getting swallowed by a whale. Being favored or blessed does not mean getting good things. But it does mean that God is giving you a role in his grand plan; he lets us human beings participate in his ongoing creation.

I've heard it said many times that Mary was asked to be the mother of Jesus. Saint Bernard preached a famous sermon along these lines. What might have happened if she'd said no? But when you read this gospel carefully, you don't hear the angel asking. He's telling Mary what is going to happen. During Mary's time, there were all kinds of stories about gods who impregnated mortal women after seduction and sometimes rape. Mary probably had heard the stories of the Roman, Greek and Egyptian gods. I wonder if that was the point of her question, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” And then the angel goes into detail about what will happen, and how the child she will bear will inherit David's throne, will be the very Son of God. Never does the angel say “how about it, Mary? Will you do it?” It seems to me that Mary is told that God is going to radically change her life, and there's nothing she can do about it.

I think that's the fate of everyone. Every one of us can recall moments when our own lives were radically changed, without our consent. We all know people who through genetics or accident or disease were physically or mentally changed so that they don't enjoy what most of us take for granted. Can we say they are favored as well? I think so, because if we believe God loves each of us and wants us to be partners with him in building up his kingdom, then he must be offering his favor, his blessing, to everyone.

And that is where Mary's freedom comes in. Mary might not have had a choice about bringing Jesus into the world, with all the pain and sorrow that it would entail, but she did have a choice about how she was going to proceed forward. She would not be like Abraham who rather than wait on God decided to have a child by his wife's slave; she would not be like Moses who told God that he couldn't speak that well, maybe Aaron his brother? She wouldn't be like Jonah, who tried to sail away from his fate and later became angry with God for not destroying the city of Nineveh.

No, Mary when told what God had in store for her cried out with joy, “Do it to me, do what you said you would do!” Because Mary, free from any stain of sin, knew that the best thing a human being could do was the will of God. Nothing else mattered.

And that's the lesson of the Annunciation, the story we've just heard. Each of us is given moments when we are invited into God's plan. Very often it's not something we would choose if we had our way. Sometimes it's painful, sometimes it appears to be a great loss. Sometimes we are invited to accompany Jesus on the road to Calvary. And that's the challenge. Can we embrace God's will for us? Can we be like Mary and say, “Do it to me, do what you said you would do?”