A Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name

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Today is the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. The Pentecostals who shaped me and my faith did not celebrate this feast, but they did delight in the Name. I learned from them that the name of Jesus is holy, precious, sweet, dear, lovely, powerful. If I close my eyes, I can still hear my grandfather, Paz, praying, whispering: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” I can still hear our little congregation singing (mostly off key, which is, no doubt, also a metaphor for so much about the way we lived): “There’s just something about that name.”

During my PhD research, I came upon countless references to the name of Jesus in the early Pentecostal periodicals. The following story, which recounts a Communion service at Chicago’s Stone Church in 1913, is typical of the best of the Pentecostalism I’ve known and know:

[A]s the shouts of praise mingled with the redemption songs, the cloud of God's gkory came down and settled upon us. We felt the hush of His presence as we sang over and over

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty
All the saints shall praise Thy Name
In earth and sky and sea.

A sister broke forth in a spiritual song, and while most of the language was unknown, all recognized over and over again the words, Jesu Christi, Jesu Christi. It was evidently a song of praise and adoration to the King of kings.

(Yes, this too strikes me as a metaphor.)

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The collect for the day praises the Father for giving “your incarnate Son the holy name of Jesus to be the sign of our salvation.” And today’s Gospel affirms that that name—Jesus, meaning “the saving one”—is the name Jesus was given at his circumcision, eight days after he was born, because it was the name Mary was given for him by the angel before he was conceived in her womb.

Johann Gerhard, whom I’ve been reading lately, concludes his meditations on the name Jesus with reflections on its “practical use,” which he says is above all for consolation:

Because this name was applied to the Messiah not by human decision but by divine command, because His name is proper and uniquely His, because it includes the treasury of all the benefits that come down to us from Christ, therefore the foundation for every true and solid comfort is being presented to us in this name.

Gerhard then continues, rhapsodic,

The name “Jesus” is a necklace woven with various gems and pearls. The heavenly Bridegroom gives it to His betrothed, and on it He impresses His own likeness deeply. The name “Jesus” is, as Bernard says, “honey in the mouth, a song in the ear, a cry of exultation in the heart. It gives light to what has been said, it gives food to what is thought, it softens what is cried out.” The name “Jesus” is the paradise of our heart, a paradise in which we look upon the flower of love, the rose of humanity, the violet of humility, the lily of purity, the hyssop of cleansing, the myrrh of incorruptibility, the palm of victory, the olive of mercy, the balsam of healing. In this paradise of our soul you see the tree of life, the rod of Aaron, the shoot from the root of Jesse, the offshoot of David, the living vine, a packet of myrrh, a flower of the field and a lily of the valleys, the font of salvation and life. You see, whatever is set forth in these figures, all of that is contained briefly in the name “Jesus”…

And at last concludes,

If you need the forgiveness of sins, this name has been given to you for this very reason: because He will save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). If you need defense, this name is a very strong tower (Prov. 18:10). If you need righteousness, that is given in this name (Jer. 23:6). If you need the Holy Spirit, He is given through this name (John 14:26). If you need salvation, salvation is in it (Acts 4:12).

Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus has been given “the name that is above every name.” What is that name? Answering, Gerhard appeals to Chemnitz, another Lutheran scholastic: that name—the name that is above every name, even “Jesus”—is God’s “glory, majesty, and power,” the blessedness of divine nature, given to Christ’s assumed nature. In other words, Jesus’ humanity—which he shares with you!—has been given a rightful share in God’s ways of being God. Listen to Gerhard:

Therefore the full apostolic proposition is like this: Christ Jesus, who emptied Himself and took on a servant’s form, who humbled Himself and became obedient even to the death of the cross, was exalted by God the Father. Hence it is correct for us to say that the composite person of the God-man, the whole person of Christ, was, as emptied, so also exalted, for His actions and sufferings are of the whole composite.

As Gerhard realized, it is because of the “supremely intimate union of the natures” and the exaltation in heaven and on earth of Jesus’ humanity to divinity that he can be and is bodily present to us at all times and all places, even more intimately than he could be or was present to his disciples or even to his mother.

But if all things are subject to Christ, then all places and all intervals of places also are subject, so that they can in no way keep Him from being able to fulfill His promise and to be present with us. To Christ is subject “whatever can be named in this age and in that which is to come” (Eph. 1:21). Among those things that can be named are also the intervals of places. Aristotle asserts that “place” befits bodies only because of “mortal weakness.” But if all things have been subjected to Christ, who has been exalted to the right hand of the Father, surely He is no longer subject to that mortal weakness in which He could not be present except in a single place and would be circumscribed by a corporeal place.

Because Jesus is so present to us, present without limitation or restriction or hinderance, answering every time we call his name and always in ways true to his name, our salvation is itself also unnameable, indescribable, passing understanding. And whatever we ask for in prayer, calling on Jesus, it’s never as good as whatever it is he is in fact giving us. The goodness that is his heart toward us is always exceeding abundantly beyond all we can ask or think or dare to imagine.

So we can sing with St Ephrem (Hymn 5):

Merciful is the Lord, 
Who has put on our names, 
Even to the point of humbling himself 
And being depicted as a mustard seed. 
He has given to us his names; 
He has taken from us our names. 
{His names have made us great.} 
Our names have made him small. 
Blessed is the one who has spread 
Your good name over his own name, 
And adorned his own names with your name.

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All of that is glorious—beyond glorious. So far beyond glorious that our words lose all purchase on meaning. But none if that can be felt or thought in anything like the right way unless we bear at every moment in our hearts the truth that God’s glory is most fully manifest in what seems least glorious, and even unworthy of God.

BLASPHEMY 
I know, I know you were told 
never to curse, never 
to swear, never to take 
the Name of the Lord your God in vain. 

But Jesus Christ
how do you not know 
the Name is only for the vulgar—
it’s nothing if not profaned!

In spite of what we’ve imagined, God’s glory, majesty, and power are no less present, and so no less active, when they are hidden, un-manifest, concealed. In fact, in the deepest sense, God is most gloriously, majestically, and powerfully present when we’re least aware of or concerned with glory, majesty, and power. The kingdom comes—God’s will is done—only as our lives conform to the modesty, negligibility, and seeming inconsequence of Jesus’ life in its beginnings.

No one understood this better than St Maximus (Amb. 5):

[I]n becoming man He was not subjugated to human nature, but on the contrary He elevated nature to Himself, making nature itself another mystery, while He Himself remained entirely beyond comprehension, showing that His own Incarnation, which was granted a birth beyond being, was more incomprehensible than every mystery. As much as He became comprehensible through the fact of His birth, by so much more do we now know Him to be incomprehensible precisely because of that birth. “For He remains hidden even after His manifestation,” says the teacher [St Dionysius the Areopagite], “or, to speak more divinely, He remains hidden in His manifestation. For the mystery remains concealed by Jesus, and can be drawn out by no word or mind, for even when spoken of, it remains ineffable, and when conceived, unknown.” Beyond this, what could be a more compelling demonstration of the Divinity’s transcendence of being? For it discloses its concealment by means of a manifestation, its ineffability through speech, and its transcendent unknowability through the mind, and, to say what is greatest o f all, it shows itself to be beyond being by entering essentially into being.

The shepherds encounter the glory of the angelic hosts. The magi wonder at the glory of the star. But by far the most glorious glory, the glory from which all other glories derive their name, is the body of Mary’s darling boy—his hands and feet, his hair and skin, his squirms and squeals. To see him, to touch him, to smell him, to hear him, taste him—is to be glorified.

So, on this feast day, let this truth sink deep down into the bones of your spirit: the dear, sweet, holy name “Jesus” is the name of someone who’s always, always, always there for you; someone who’s utterly without ego and without agenda; someone who wants nothing but to share with you all the joys of his everyday human life, joys which have nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of privilege.