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Luke 2: 15–21
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Send out thy light and thy truth, Lord, that they may lead us to thy
holy hill and to thy dwelling. Amen.
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Though some of my neighbors have already thrown their Christmas trees
out by the curb, it is still the Christmas season here in the
Church – at least until next Sunday. And this morning we
are observing the Christmas season festival of The Holy Name. Now,
you might never have heard of this day in the Christian calendar or
noticed its symbol, but it’s a celebration the Episcopal
Church — as well as Catholic and Orthodox Churches — observe
to call attention to the name given to Jesus by the angel before he was
even conceived in the womb. That name was Jesus, and it
means “God saves” or “God will save.” And
it was given to Jesus on the eighth day after his birth, the day he
would have been circumcised, thereby receiving Jewish identity, and
would have been given this name, full of meaning for his life. And,
of course, that name is not just about him and what he will do, for the
Lord’s saving grace, the Lord’s saving power has everything
to do with our own lives.
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Now, I have to admit, that I’ve never preached on The Holy Name
before. Every year on the first Sunday after Christmas there are
other stories that warrant attention – Jesus’ presentation
in the Temple when those aged saints, Anna and Simeon, both prophesied
over him, or the dream Joseph had when an angel told him to take the
baby and his mother and flee into Egypt, because Herod was after them
all. But I’ve always wanted to preach on The Holy Name,
imagining that I could then rehearse and explore some of the names we
know our Lord and Savior by – Emmanuel, Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace among many
others. Every one of them more intriguing than the last.
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But this week, when I finally looked into it, I thought I must have
made a mistake. For what I discovered was not a whole string of
poetic names by which we understand who Jesus was and what he does for
us. No, the Holy Name was simply a three–letter abbreviation
of his name in Greek. In medieval times people would place the
Greek initials “i” (iota), “h”
(etta), and “s” (sigma) ” which are
the first two plus the last Greek letter of the name Jesus — over
the doorways of homes or over the gates of a city, sometimes with rays
of light shining behind them. It was a kind of shorthand way of
signifying God’s grace and protection over all who entered
there. And — at first — I thought, “Well, that
might have given them a sense of holy trust, a holy assurance
that Jesus was active and powerful, honored and revered in that
place. But most of us don’t even recognize what those Greek
letters are, much less what they stand for.” So I was about
to drop the whole idea of preaching on The Holy Name.
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But all of that changed when I read one of those end–of–year
articles that summarize the kind of year we have just lived
through. This article, written by someone named Katherine Miller,
appeared in the New York Times opinion section last Tuesday. ¹
She rehearsed how chaotic and fragile a year we have been
'through – with Covid, gun violence, weather disasters, the war
in Ukraine, inflation, energy prices, conspiracy theories and all
manner of election disputes. Her list went on and on. But
suddenly there was one sentence that stopped me in my
tracks. “And then,” she wrote, “in this fragile
landscape of trust, there were the courts.” And it was that
phrase “in this fragile landscape of trust” that
caught my attention.
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And suddenly, I got it. What else did the monogram of The Holy Name
signify to medieval believers but a fragile landscape of
trust? For they too lived in chaotic and uncertain
times. But when they saw those three letters signifying the name
of Jesus – maybe over an ordinary gateway or doorway — they
were reminded that they lived surrounded and buoyed up by
God’s love and power, by Jesus’ ability to redeem every
situation, to be present and powerful in every storm. That is
what they trusted in – and their trust was not misplaced. No
wonder they placed those visual reminders all around them.
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And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we, in our
own day, are in the very same place. For our faith and
our peace of mind do not depend on the courts and a rule of
law . . . or on
science . . . or on the
economy . . . or on dependable weather
patterns. More deeply, more fundamentally, our faith and our
trust rest in everything we have ever learned about Jesus — calming
storms, calming hearts, bringing his light into peoples’
darkness. This is what we depend on when our hearts are
troubled. Jesus, and all we have ever learned about him, is the
focus of our every prayer. He is what sustains our fragile
landscape of trust.
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So suddenly, I got it. I understood why our Episcopal Church and
Orthodox believers and the Catholic Church all celebrate this festival
of The Holy Name, though some of them do it a day or two later than we
do. I understood why Pope Francis has made the emblem of The Holy
Name – those three Greek letters that are a kind of shorthand way
of writing the name of Jesus with rays of light coming out behind
them – a prominent emblem on his official coat of arms.
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And maybe — most important of all — I realized that on this
first day of a new year, a year when we are all facing challenges,
there is no name, no symbol I would rather focus on than The Holy Name
of Jesus.
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Amen.
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¹ Katherine Miller “Was the World Collapsing or
Were You Just Freaking Out?” (New York Times,
Opinion, December 20, 2022).
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