The Naming of Jesus

Sermon for 26 December 2010

The Naming of Jesus: Luke 2: 15-21

By Sharyn Hall

Choosing a name for a child is a very important responsibility. Often parents consider many things when choosing a name for their child. The choice may be to honour a family member or a close friend, or in admiration for a famous person.

In the ancient, Biblical world, names were important for identity and meaning for the individual as a member of a community. Children were given names by their parents, which were significant to the circumstances of their birth or the destiny of the child. An example is the name, Moses, which in Hebrew means literally ‘to draw out’. This is an appropriate name for Moses, who as an infant was saved from death by being drawn out of the water for Pharaoh’s daughter. As a man, Moses became the leader of the Hebrew people and led them out of slavery in Egypt to freedom.

Sometimes the name of a person in the Bible changes because of specific circumstances. Saul became an apostle of Jesus to the Gentiles of the Roman Empire, so his name was changed to the Roman name, Paul. Jesus changed the Hebrew name of his disciple, Simon, to the Greek name, Petros, which means ‘rock’, because Jesus wanted Simon to build a foundation for his mission to the world.

In the culture of the ancient Middle East, a person’s name was essential to personhood. Your name identified you as an individual, a member of a family or a tribe, a freeman or a slave. Anonymous people in the scriptures were given names in later writings to provide an identity for them. A famous example is the three wise men or magi who appear anonymously in the gospel of Matthew. In the sixth century, a Greek version of the magi story gave them three names, Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar, names which have remained popular identities for the magi to this day.

The naming of a child in the ancient Hebrew culture was ceremonial, particularly if the child was the first-born male child. After eight days, the child was circumcised and given his name. Then the family travelled to the temple in Jerusalem to dedicate the child to God and to give an offering of thanks for God’s blessing. The name given to Jesus was not chosen by Mary and Joseph. His name was chosen by God and told to them before the baby was born. The significance of God’s choice is evident in the name. In the gospels, he is called Jesus, but that is the Greek form of his Hebrew name. The gospels were written in Greek because it was the literary language of the time. The Hebrew name of Jesus is Joshua, more properly pronounced Yeshua, which means ‘The Lord saves’ or simply ‘Saviour’.

Similarly, the word, ‘Christ’, is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word, ‘Mashiakh’, which means ‘Anointed One’ or ‘Messiah’. As early as the first century, Jesus was called ‘Joshua Mashiakh’ or ‘Jesus Christ’, not as a title, but as his personal name. We commonly refer to Jesus as Jesus Christ. If we were to call him by his Hebrew name, it would be Joshua Mashiakh. In either language, his name means ‘Saviour, the Anointed One.’

The significance of his name was understood by his early disciples and followers. His name meant that he was anointed by God to bring salvation to the Hebrew people. His name, Joshua, was more than a reference to the ancient hero, Joshua, who led the Hebrew people into the promised land. His name meant that he would save the people again, but not with military power. This Joshua would save the people by restoring them to the covenant between God and God’s people, the covenant made with Abraham by God. Joshua Mashiakh was the anointed one sent by God to lead the people into a new salvation. This Mashiakh would lead the people into a renewed spiritual relationship with God free from oppressive religion which obscured God’s love. When God’s angels told Mary and Joseph to name the child Joshua, God had a special plan for this infant. That plan would be revealed gradually over many years.

We honour the Greek name, Jesus Christ. Perhaps we could become more familiar with his Hebrew name, Joshua Mashiakh. The meaning of his name is what we need to remember. The name chosen by God for this infant born in Bethlehem is a message of hope for God’s people. God has not abandoned humanity. Despite the hardship and sorrow of earthly life, God’s saving grace is always at hand to provide hope, courage and strength for the present and for the future.

To name a child is a great privilege and the name carries the hope and promise for what the child will bring to the world. We thank God for the infant born over two thousand years ago and for the gift of hope in every child born today, and in God’s future tomorrows. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Christmas Eve 2010

St. Luke’s, Burlington

By Stuart Pike

When I was a teenager living in England, one of the marvelous things which my family enjoyed were the magnificent cathedrals.

Often on a week-end we would jump into the car and drive to one diocese or another - to Winchester or Worcester or Chichester or Salisbury or Exeter or to London.

We went to so many.

We basically Cathedral-crawled our way through England during the three years we lived there.

Each cathedral was beautiful; each one, in its own way, contained something perfectly holy within its walls.

First of all, one would get the sight of the Cathedral from a distance.

This would spark in me an excitement which would mount until we would climb the steps and, necks craning back to see the height of it, we would at last enter through the heavy wooden doors and into the holy space.

I would imagine the sheer weight of the structure, and would feel the solidity of the stones,

the history of human effort, which went into the construction.

Oddly enough, though, the holiness for me wasn’t perceived in the physicality of the building, but in the great weightless and invisible space.

The holy was in the great emptiness contained within those beautifully adorned walls.

It was so entirely fitting that all that stone and glass and wood be the physical container of this holiness

- it all filled one with awe and prepared one for the sacred experience -

but the infinite was in the space.

The other thing which I would often experience in those cathedrals, was the sacred music

- the organ, the beautiful singing, which, like the beauty of the cathedral itself,

would bring me right up to its conclusion: the silent and empty immensity in which was God.

The sheer beauty of the music would cause me to gasp, and in the drawn breath the holiness of that space would fill me.

- God is here!

The memory of it now fills me with the sense of excitement and wonder.

I still feel that way when I visit our own cathedral in Hamilton,

and I feel it within the beautiful wood and stained glass, and in the music of this Church of St. Luke.

And now for something completely different, as they would say on Monty Python:

The birth of Jesus was completely at the other side of the spectrum.

Jesus was born, not in some royal palace or hallowed hall, but in the squalor and stench of a stable.

We like to paint a serene picture - a humble, yet oh so clean tableau.

The animals are gentle, as are the shepherds

who have hastened to behold the holy mystery,

the baby tenderly and mildly smiles at his adoring mother who kneels at the manger.

Joseph, the strong and silent type, stands protectively by.

All my experiences of stables and their animal occupants and of babies and their birth tell another story.

A noisy and smelly and uncomfortable story.

A story of poverty and pain and of cries and tears in the dark

and of fear

and such great hope in the midst of it all.

Amazingly, God who created the universe, leapt across the chasm of infinity to be born in such a poor and rude place as this stable.

The poor shepherds were the roughest sorts of people you could find.

The circumstances of Jesus’ birth were desperate.

In my many decades since those teenage years and all those cathedrals, I have come to experience the holy in the meanest of circumstances as well.

Maybe it has something to do with Jesus saying to us,

“Whatever you do to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you do to me.”

Jesus: in the least, the poor, the lonely the sick and the suffering.

I experienced the holy:

In the woman in Uruguay living in the corrugated tin shack, without a husband, caring for her six children.

In the six year old beggar girl in Madagascar carrying her baby brother on her back.

In the man in his fifties reeling with the news of his terminal diagnosis.

In the last breath drawn by the dying person.

In the stark emptiness of these situations, there is, once again, an astounding holiness which cannot be explained in words.

I sometimes draw in my breath in recognition. God is here!

If God is in the exquisite perfection of the Cathedral, and God is in the baseness and poverty of the stable,

- just where is there a place where God is not?

I think that the thought contained in this last question is exactly why Jesus was born in a stable.

The story holds such extreme contrasts together.

Perhaps this is why the story holds such meaning for us, and why we tell it again and again.

Our lives contain such incredible contrasts. Our lives are sometimes pure and pristine, and sometimes they’re so extremely messy - sometimes all in the same day!

The maker of the universe, born in weakness and poverty.

The coarse shepherds are witnesses, alongside the chorus of heavenly angels.

God’s being extends to all sorts and conditions.

And God is where you are!

And more amazing than the place of Jesus’ birth is the fact that God was born into human flesh at all.

What a concept!

We forget to be amazed.

Because of Jesus’ birth we know that human is one of the ways God can be.

Being human is something which all of us experience

- in our relationship with others, and in our own being.

It is into the midst of this humanity that our Saviour was born.

In the midst of the noise of our lives and in the peace of quiet contemplation, God is.

In the profanity of our nature and in the wondrous harmony of our music, God is.

God isn’t only reserved for the pure and the noble;

God is for everyone:

the wisest and the dullest,

the purest and the basest.

Now in what I hope are my middle years, I have come to treasure the holiness which I experience in the beauty:

in the old wood and glass and in the music.

But I realize that I need to bring that sense of holiness out of the Church with me and into the rest of my life - into the humanity of it all.

And sometimes I gasp in recognition: God is here! Amen.

Advent 4 A

Sermon for 19 December 2010

Nine Lessons and Carols

By Sharyn Hall

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we prepare for the celebration of Christmas by reading scripture and singing about the miraculous events surrounding the birth of Jesus. As part of this sermon, I will add another musical composition, which I believe appropriately heralds the birth of the Messiah. The music is a fanfare, which is a traditional way to announce the arrival of an important person, but this music has the title, ‘Fanfare for the Common Man.’ It was composed in 1942 by the American composer, Aaron Copland, to honour the cause of freedom for all people.

You may question why I believe this fanfare is suitable to honour the birth of Jesus. Jesus was an uncommon man, an extraordinary human being, the Son of God. In our Christmas celebrations we tend to emphasize the divine aspects of his unusual birth.

We remember the visit of the angel Gabriel to young Mary to announce to her that she will bear a male infant by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that child will be God’s Messiah. We sing about the appearance of angels in the sky over a lonely hill to announce to ordinary shepherds that a child born in Bethlehem will be the Saviour of the world. We marvel at the story of the strange Magi who follow a path of an unusual star because they believe it foretells the birth of a great king. We read again and again the wonderful stories of extraordinary events which surround the birth of Jesus, and we forget that Jesus was a human child, made of flesh and blood, fragile and vulnerable like millions of infants born before and since he came into the world.

We believe that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. It is a mystery, which belongs to God, and like many acts of God, we cannot comprehend it fully. God wanted Jesus to live a human life, an ordinary human life experienced by ordinary people. We know that Jesus was not born in a palace with the protection and comfort of wealth and power. He was born into a common, Hebrew family making the best of their circumstances, living with the turmoil of mass migration, the hardship of political oppression and the danger of racial prejudice. Jesus came into the world as a common male child; this was God’s plan. Only Mary his mother knew in her heart that the infant Jesus was an uncommon miracle.

Over the centuries, Christian belief in Jesus has emphasized his divinity, sometimes purposely diminishing his humanity. Doctrines and teaching in various branches of Christianity have developed in relation to his divine identity and mission. These interpretations of Jesus often have resulted in divisive arguments and fragmentation of the Christian faith, forgetting that all Christians are one body with Jesus in our shared humanity.

At about the same time that Aaron Copland was composing the ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, was preaching against Nazism in Germany, and urging his fellow citizens to find their Christian roots in the compassion of Jesus. In his writing, he states, “Christ was not essentially a teacher, a lawgiver, but a human being, a real human being like us…God did not become an idea, a principle, a program, a universally valid belief, or a law; God became human.” Bonhoeffer preached about the universality of humanity as God’s creation realized in the person of Jesus. He opposed the Nazi idea of a superhuman Arian race, which must be cleansed of all impure human strains, such as the blind, the deaf, the lame and the Jews, all people that Jesus welcomed with love and compassion.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and executed in 1945 for his resistance to Hitler. He was only thirty-five years old. Bonhoeffer was a common man, and yet his teaching and writings have influenced generations to see the humanity in Jesus, which calls us to use our own humanness to serve God’s love for all people. As Bonhoeffer says, Christ was not concerned with action as universal law, but whether my action now helps my neighbour to be a human being before God.

The ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ has appealed to people from many walks of life. It affirms the dignity of every human being. One of my favourite versions is an arrangement for organ and percussion instruments. It is performed every New Year’s Eve in St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. St. Batholomew’s is a huge Anglican church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which was threatened with closure because its congregation had dwindled. A few years ago, the congregation decided to become a parish for the people in the neighbourhood who needed a caring community. Today it is a thriving parish with programs for social needs, interfaith education and joyful hospitality. It is a Christian community, which looks outside itself to serve God’s people. Every year the congregation listens to the ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ and is reminded that they are members of God’s common humanity.

In this season of Christmas, many people are compassionate and generous to neighbours in their community. Poverty, hunger and injustice do not take a holiday, and sadly are most keenly experienced at times of seasonal joy. The birth of Jesus gives us hope in the face of hardship and sorrow in the world. The birth of Jesus reminds us that we too are made in God’s image with tremendous potential to carry on the mission of God’s Son. As a child of God, Jesus calls us to be humane and compassionate people, God’s people, not only in this Christmas season, but every ordinary day of our common lives. Amen.

Advent 3 A

Advent III

Sermon

Matthew 11: 2-11

By Sheila Plant

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our Strength and our Redeemer.

Today marks the midpoint of the Advent season and the sights and sounds of Christmas are all around us. In days gone by, this Sunday was known as “Stirring Up Sunday”-the Sunday when women everywhere would rush home after church to give the Christmas pudding a good stir, making sure that all the ingredients were well soaked in brandy or sherry. Once that was done, family preparations for Christmas could continue.

More importantly though, we light our 3^rd candle on the Advent wreath today—the candle of joy and the Joy of God. We are called to keep alive the vision that provides us with hope and to seek the Peace of God—that special peace that only God can give; that peace that comes when we turn and walk in the path that Jesus has shown us. The lighting of this candle highlights one of the realities of the gift of joy—that reality which relates to the fact that while it cannot be sought, the gift of joy can be given or received by us.

So, joy is not something we can seek, but it is something that can overcome us when we are working to keep the vision alive. As we walk this path, joy happens to us as we gain glimpses of what God is all about. We encounter situations where we see God’s promises coming true and suddenly we have this great gift of joy in our hearts.

Imagine if you will for a moment John the Baptist—languishing in jail. Herod is about to kill him—and undoubtedly, he already knows this although the particular circumstances of his death are still to be shaped by Herod’s wife and daughter. John is uncertain about whether he has completed his ministry or not, uncertain about whether or not Jesus is the Messiah about whom he has proclaimed. He sends his messengers from the prison to ask Jesus that all important question: “Are you the one who is come or should we wait for another?”

Can you imagine the feeling that overcame him when the disciples returned repeating the words of Jesus: “Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them. Blessed are they who take no offence to me.”

John must have been overwhelmed with joy when he heard that all he had yearned for as a child of Abraham was in fact happening. God was working a great work through Jesus, child of Mary. This was the kind of work that Isaiah spoke of in our Old Testament reading this morning.

Absolute joy! We should remember not to confuse joy with happiness. Happiness is something that our American friends pursue according to their constitution. Joy is not happiness or even contentment. Rather joy is overwhelming. It is what happens when we witness God at work—whether within our family, our church, our community or the wider world. We see the works of God being done and as we allow God to do his work through us, we are given the gift of joy.

The church I attended as a young child after arriving from England recognized White Gift Sunday. I remember proudly taking a tin of soup or a box of cereal wrapped in white tissue paper to the chancel steps. It wasn’t until much later that I learned the significance of White Gift Sunday. It was about doing the works of God, the work of caring and praying that joy may come and that the hand of God may be seen through those gifts we gave.

Although a specific Sunday may not be designated as White Gift Sunday, conditions in our society have deemed collecting gifts of food as a necessity—for distribution to a food bank. These collections and drives take place as often as necessary. Traditionally, we here at St. Luke’s have generously given to food drives for St. Matthew’s House. Since the summer, a dedicated group of volunteers have chosen to help in our Food for Life programme. We are reaching out to the less fortunate in our community to help them put food on the table. These volunteers not only give the gift of joy by doing God’s work and by caring about others, they themselves receive the gift of joy for the same reasons. Just ask them.

Joy is a wonderful thing and it can easily overtake us. It is not continuous , but it pops up whenever we see God at work—healing the sick, curing the lame, giving sight to the blind or proclaiming good news to the poor. It pops up when we do the work of God and we understand that God is actually do his work in many circumstances that surround us.

Everlasting joy, says Isaiah, comes on the day of Christ’s second coming:

“The ransom of the Lord shall come to Zion with singing and everlasting joy shall be upon their lands.”

There is a day coming—a day which we are called to prepare for—a day of eternal joy. It is a joy that we get a taste of in the here and now when we receive the gift of God at work and when we do the works of God. It is then that it becomes possible for others to have the joy of seeing him.

And so, on this Sunday of joy, as we light the 3^rd candle on our Advent wreath, we thank you O Lord for the excitement and delight we experience at this joyful time of year. Help us to share your joy with others so that they too will be filled with your Spirit.

Amen.

Advent 2 A - Repent?!

Advent 2 A 2010

Isaiah 11: 1-10

Matthew 3: 1-12

By Stuart Pike

I must admit that in all my 22 years of ministry, It has never seriously crossed my mind to begin a sermon by calling my listeners a “brood of vipers!”

I could be missing out on a great opportunity in preaching here, but somehow it just doesn’t seem to me to be the most tactful way of communicating my message.

Evidently, John the Baptist didn’t have the same seminary courses that I had. And yet, what was it that made his preaching so compelling? It appears that people were journeying from Jerusalem and all over Judea to come to see him

So what is really going on here, anyway? Most of us are already starting to get into the Christmas spirit. We’ve already had our Advent Carol Service. There is Christmas music starting to play on the radio, and certainly on the muzac at the shopping centres. The neighbours are already starting to outdo one another with their Christmas lights displays. Everyone is trying to get into the Christmas cheer and here we have this stern voice yelling antisocial things at us from the wilderness. Can’t someone just give the man a glass of eggnog or something? Just something to wash down the locusts and put him in a better frame of mind?

Doesn’t John know that there are only 19 more shopping days until Christmas? Isn’t Advent supposed to be about getting us into the cheery Christmas Spirit?

Well, the answer is basically, no. At least not in the popular way. John was born two thousand years before the phenomenal invention called tinsel! Advent, the first season of a new Church year is about preparing for Jesus’ coming, but not simply about his coming at Christmas, it’s about Jesus coming again at the end of time. And it’s about Jesus coming to each one of us personally in our hearts.

And so John the Baptist calls his listeners to repent. “Repentance” is not a word which is readily used these days. It might conjure up the image of some shabbily dressed guy wearing a sandwich board which might read “Repent, the end is nigh” or something similar. It might at the least make you think of a conservative and judgmental type of Christianity. We don’t want to preach repentance like that here, do we?

Well, I think that the word “repentance” has picked up a lot of negative baggage. Repentance isn’t about making yourself feel guilt and groveling in the dirt. The actual word, repentance means to turn around – to change direction. It isn’t just about feeling sorry and begging forgiveness, it’s about acting to change your direction. It’s about aligning your way to the way of God.

There are a few steps to repentance, and in fact, it is probably best to think of it as a cyclical process. It isn’t just about repenting once, and then you’re done. We should think of this as the way that we grow closer and closer to God. We could call it a Christian’s cycle of quality improvement!

The three steps of repentance are: seeing, assessing, and acting.

The people all knew that there was something missing in their lives, and that is why they trekked for miles along the dusty roads of Judea to see this prophet of whom they had heard so much. They’re wondering, is he the Messiah? And so they ask him so.

John tells them that there is someone more powerful than he who is coming after him and that John is not even worthy to carry his sandals. John the Baptist is telling his listeners to prepare to meet the most important person they would ever meet in their lives, and that is the Messiah.

So how do we prepare for seeing the Messiah?

Well, how do we normally prepare ourselves when we are going to meet someone important? Or if we are going an important event?

Well, even for an ordinary day, I start out in the morning by heading into the bathroom to check out what my face looks like in the mirror. After I get over the initial shock of what I see, I start to assess what needs to be done. I make sure there’s lots of light so that I can make a good assessment – no matter how painful that assessment may be. Then I start to go about the process of damage control! Time to wash the face, shave etc until I look respectable again.

So I will have done those three steps: seeing – looking at myself in the mirror; assessing – deciding just how bad it is, and acting – damage control. If I am preparing for an extra-special event or person, then I might have to get some expert help – like maybe arrange to get my hair cut in advance. All of this is a process of repentance for my face!

John the Baptist is asking people to prepare for the Messiah, however. His call is like shining a bright light on the people and holding up a mirror so that they can see what their lives are like, can assess them, and can act to change them so that they are in alignment with God’s way. John marked the action of repentance with baptism. The people returned to the Jordan river which their ancestors crossed to enter the promised land. Here, they were going back to the river, immersing themselves in it and then climbing back on its bank to find the promised land again. As John says, “The Kingdom of heaven has come near.” And Jesus, later says, “The Kingdom of heaven is among you.”

And that’s repentance. It’s not essentially about groveling, but it is about changing. And I believe it is something that we need to keep doing as we mature in our Christian faith. We shouldn’t just think that we’ve arrived and don’t need to change. Our faith is a journey along a path. We see, we assess, we act, and then do it over and over again.

And that’s why it is important for us, as a Church to truly experience the season of Advent as a time to prepare, to repent, that is to see ourselves, to assess how we’re doing in our faith, and to act to walk more closely in Jesus’ way, which leads us to our God.

So let’s hold off on that eggnog for now, please, and let’s use this season of Advent to prepare our hearts for Jesus’ coming. Take a serious look at yourself and at your life. What is missing in it at the spiritual level? What can you change to walk more closely in Jesus’ way? When we see the messiah, we do want to be ready. Amen.