December 1998 Issue

Names for the child who came "to save his people from their sins" provide the launching pad for many a sermon on this passage. The babe in the crib is given a range of names—"Jesus," "Emmanuel," "Savior," for starters—and the names are pregnant with possibility for the preacher.

Presbyterian preacher George Buttrick gets us thinking about the meaning of names in a Christmas sermon preached at Harvard's Memorial Church. In The Name Of The Nameless¹ Buttrick counterpoises Jacob's Genesis question to God, "Then Jacob asked, `Tell me, I pray, your name?'" (Gen 32:29) with the angel's instructions to Joseph, "And you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." (Mt. 1:21) "What is in a name after all?," Buttrick wonders. We shy away from the question, brushing off the significance of names with the diminishing conclusion that there is hardly more in them than "tags by which the mailman brings Christmas presents to our door."

If we pay attention, however, the question of our name and God's has much more to do with Christmas than identifying our gifts. Names are important, and if we're honest, we long to know them. We want to have a name for God. In fact, "perhaps everything we do is an attempt, a groping question, to learn God's name." At different times we give God names: "Mystery," "Power," "Holiness," "Judgment," "Enigma." All these names are true in part, but our lists of abstractions fail to fill our longing. Abstractions have little to do with our experience, and what we're really after in seeking a name for God is finding out more about our own name. What about a name that is more concrete, a human name?

"Jesus" is a human name, "manifestly" so. Like "John" or "William," "Jesus" is a common name. The trick is that while Jesus' name is common and human, the man behind it is unique and divine. Jesus alone has the power to "save his people from their sins." Of all the common names, "Jesus" is the central one. The name "Jesus" "starts our tears and joy and deepest resolve." Our very salvation begins with the name, "Jesus."

With the knowledge of this central name for God comes increased knowledge of ourselves. We may now know our own name. At Christmas time, at least, our name is not "pride" or "dust," but is "lost in the name of Jesus, and thus forever found."

In The King's Names,² British preacher D.W. Cleverly Ford also takes up the question of titles for the Christ child. Ford focuses on the name "Immanuel," "God with us." The name could have been simpler, he says: "Immanuish," "a man with us," would have been easier for us to accept. "Immanuel" is the given name, however, and we must contend with the complications therein.

As it happens, the complications of the name begin when Jesus was born. Jesus' mother was a virgin. Ford points out, the account of the event of Jesus' birth "takes some believing." For the gospel writer St. Matthew, for Joseph, for Mary, for all of us, Jesus' virgin birth is hard to believe.

Ford runs through several plausible explanations for, and arguments against, the virgin birth. He describes well the Christian dilemma: we see the difficulties in accepting the history, and yet we also see the difficulties in rejecting it. The way out of the dilemma, it seems to Ford, is in the name "Immanuel." The point of the story is that for purely divine motives God enters history: God comes to be with us in human form so that the process of our salvation is
begun in us, for us.

Robert Vaughn, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Petersburg, VA ,for many years, concentrates on the salvific quality of Jesus' name. In Who Came?—A Savior,³ Vaughn teaches us that the name Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name Joshua, and that Joshua means, "God is salvation." Having reminded the congregation that Jesus came to save not just other people, but Jesus' people, the people of the church, Vaughn then describes the quality of the effects of salvation on our lives.

Vaughn depicts salvation's impact by setting up three different groups of terms. The first cluster of terms is connected to the past: deliverance, liberation and freedom. Jesus delivers us from prior sins and liberates us from the burden of guilt. The second group concerns the present: healing, wholeness and meaning. Jesus works through our present condition to heal us and find meaning. The third group of terms is oriented toward the future: reconciliation, redemption and restoration. These concepts point toward a time in the future when our salvation in Jesus will be complete. All these terms help us understand the name of the child born in Bethlehem, the babe named "God is salvation."

While the name of Jesus is not the centerpiece of his homily, Catholic theologian Karl Rahner does guide us to the responsibility that accompanies Jesus' naming. In For Us No Angel From Heaven,"⁴ Rahner directs our attention to the instructions given to Joseph by the angel. The angel tells Joseph to be a husband to Mary, and to "fulfill the duties of a father toward this child which heaven has sent to your bride." Among other things, Joseph is to name the child. In naming Jesus and being a father to him, Joseph is called on to participate in the "great, public, official story of salvation."

Rahner preaches that we, too, must take parental responsibility for the "Holy One in ourselves, our lives, in our work." We, too, must be drawn into the mystery of salvation. Unlike Joseph's experience, "for us no angel from heaven appears." In the absence of the angel's directive, the gospel text itself demands that we be guardians of the Son of God. On Christmas Day we might do well to ask ourselves, "In honoring the Jesus whom we meet in others, have we been as `true as Joseph, of whom it was said: he was faithful, he took the child and his mother to himself, he spent his whole life guarding the child so that it might become in truth the savior and the life of the world?'"

Susan Steinberg

1. George Buttrick, "The Name Of The Nameless," in Sermons Preached In A University Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1959), pp. 164-171.
2. D. W. Cleverley Ford, "The King's Names," in An Expository Preacher's Notebook, by D.W. Cleverley Ford (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1960), pp. 30-35.
3. Robert Vaughan, "Who Came?—A Savior," in Three Messages From Second Presbyterian Church, by Robert Vaughan. The three sermons in this booklet were preached on the first three Sundays of Advent, 1970, in Petersburg, VA.
4. Karl Rahner, "For Us No Angel From Heaven," in Biblical Homilies, by Karl Rahner (Dublin: Herder and Herder, 1967), pp. 9-12.