What really is in a name?
A lot of people who come to church this week will hear a gospel passage that sounds an awful lot like the one they heard the last time they were in church.
Many will have heard Luke 2:1-20 on Christmas Eve and get a bit of a recap (verses 15-20) with just one extra verse:
After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
Luke 2:21
And being that it is Christmas, we might still be talking about Christmas. Or we might be talking about this particular day, the Feast of The Holy Name.
Hence that one verse at the end.
This short story leads us in very different directions. We can talk about the literal contents of the story. Or the tradition which includes the circumcision and naming of Jesus. And we can certainly talk about the impact of the name.
Perhaps the most interesting approach we can take this week is simply reflecting on what names mean to us. Both in general and in this particular case.
In scripture, tradition, and practice, we refer to Jesus’s name itself having an effect. On people in the hearing and in the saying.
We speak about this a lot and yet I’m not sure how much we really describe it.
It seems we make the effecting character of speaking the name of Jesus as another literal/metaphorical binary choice. Either saying “Jesus” is magical or it is “just a name” that means something to us.
Like any binary, I find this choice ridiculous.
But it does mean we need to ponder what the holy name means. Because scripture says that it does things. And it is far more significant than referring to some dude named Bob.
If it isn’t magic AND it isn’t just a name, then what are we dealing with? Well, there actually is a ton of possibility that most of us have some experience with. For don’t we think Jesus himself is effective now?
Here are some ways I approach this text:
- Reflection
- Reflection on the holy name
- no in-between
- no video