December 1998 Issue

Several illustrious preachers of the Christian church picked up on the theme of name in their sermons. G. Campbell Morgan who preached from the pulpit at Westminster Chapel in London delivered a sermon (the biographical information indicated that it was "to the multitudes") titled The Name of Jesus. The first part of the sermon explained the importance of name in the Hebrew world and how name stood for identity and significance (which is much different from the Western world). Second, he elaborated on the depth of the meaning of Jesus' name. Finally, the preacher shared with his "multitude" the reason for the giving of this name, Jesus, "for he shall save his people from their sins."¹

One of the most familiar names among American clergy, George Arthur Buttrick, shared a Christmas sermon, The Name of the Nameless, in the Memorial Church, Harvard University. He began by asking, What's in a name? Buttrick connected this text in Matthew to Genesis 32:29, "Then Jacob asked ... `Tell me, I pray, your name?'" Jacob's problem was that he lived in polytheistic days (there were many gods); so there at the Jabbok, Jacob had to be sure which god he was wrestling with. Buttrick suggests that we have the same kind of conversation with God. "Thus we and God, God ever asking our name and we ever asking His name."

Jacob was fearful that the river - god's name might be "Judgment" since he had tricked and deceived his blind father and brother. Like Jacob, "if we could learn God's true name, we might thus learn our own." At Christmas, we hear that God has a human name, Jesus. Buttrick concludes however that God has many names: Mystery, Power, Judgment, Holiness, Enigma, but "the central name, if only because it starts our tears and joy and deepest resolve, is Jesus." Intimately so, God asks us our name at Christmas. Buttrick's suggested response is "Then we can tell Him that our name is not now `dust' or `pride'; for our name is now lost in the name of Jesus, and thus forever found."²

John Vannorsdall on the Protestant Hour in 1977 delivered another of his marvelous sermons, Emmanuel. He wonders what has happened to the "flower children" of the sixties because he believes they taught him so much, that "I live too much in my head, repress my senses and ignore the world of nature." The preacher saw in the hippie generation a half-truth, that there is goodness in people, that the body is a delight and that peace is possible. The problem is that it is only half the truth, and they worship "a god with no name." This unnamed god offers neither judgment nor promise. The other half of the truth is that some people are "mean" and that we "wring our peace out of a world that is also violent," and we "need to learn to enjoy both feelings and reason." Vannorsdall argues that we cannot get along with a god with no name nor is he willing "to take the long slide back into pantheism and bow down before every blade of grass ... nor will I abandon myself to some unnamed fate ... It is just a week til Christmas, and I will follow that star and go to Bethlehem to see this child. I already know his name."

Harry Emerson Fosdick used verse 21 ("for he will save his people from their sins") as a springboard for a sermon The Modern World's Rediscovery of Sin. He began by pointing out the "clear contrast (which) exists between the Christianity of our fathers and the liberal Christianity to which most of us have become accustomed." Fosdick insisted that to earlier generations sin was a "horrid reality," "a deep seated depravity" but that liberal Christianity had ignored this dark side of human nature.

In 1939, Fosdick was suggesting that the modern world was about to rediscover the power of sin. He pointed to the aggressive potential of Germany. He remembered how Horace Mann, a hundred years before, had predicted that education would eliminate crime! In keeping with the popular sermon structure of his day, Fosdick proceeded to elaborate on three points: First, the rediscovery of sin "adds the dimension of depth to our thought of our social problems." We are made aware that there is something wrong in our human natures and easy panaceas will not fix all our social problems. Second, "this truth adds the dimension of depth to our thought of ourselves." He remembered a story shared by Oscar Wilde of a religious hermit who was such a holy man that none of the evil spirits could tempt him. Satan decided to take the man on. And after declaring that all the methods of the evil spirits were crude, Satan said to the man, "Have you heard the good news? Your brother has been made Bishop of Alexandria." Whereupon, the man was filled with jealousy. Fosdick seemed to be suggesting that we are most whole when we are honest with ourselves about our nature, "far from being the beginning of discouragement, (it) is the beginning of hope." Third, the realization of the pervasiveness of sin adds the dimension of depth to our understanding of Christ himself (for he will save his people from their sins). In closing, Fosdick shared an experience of overhearing two young men leaving church. One put his hand on the other's shoulder and said gently to the other, "Well, I guess the time has passed for high ideals only; it is Christ we need!"³

The Lord Is Come was a National Radio Pulpit sermon by Ralph Sockman in 1960. The New York City Methodist pastor remembered how the anticipation of receiving gifts excited his boyhood Christmas experiences. As an adult, he wondered aloud with his listeners of just "what it is that keeps the excitement in Christmas?" Could it be the commercialism? No, he reasoned. Could it be the church that somehow keeps Christmas alive? Actually, it is Christmas that paradoxically keeps the church going.

The energy source for Christmas is found in the text, Emmanuel, God with us. The Christmas story stays alive, the excitement never diminishes because it (the story) reminds us that God is with us. The story takes us back to Bethlehem each time we hear it. Like migratory birds, we fly home to Bethlehem as we hear eternal meaning in familiar words. Second, Christmas reminds us that God is "within us." It is a time when we "come back to our real nature." Third, Christmas "brings to view God above us." Christmas reminds us that God is living and loving, and as Sockman would declare, "the wonder grows!"

In Biblical Homilies, Karl Rahner has a sermon, For Us No Angel From Heaven, in which he makes the point that we in fact do! Rahner believed that Joseph was quite jealous of the fact that Mary had been visited by angels and chosen to be the bearer of the special child; thus, he "resolved to divorce her quietly." The angel visited Joseph to give him equal time and to convince Joseph that he was needed to be the guardian of the Child, "to play an official role in the salvation story." He was "directly appointed to that office, and not just drifting into this relationship with the divine child through the accident of his betrothal to Mary."

Although "no angel from heaven appears," we too are "called to be guardians of the Holy One in ourselves, in our lives, in our work." In what appears to be the ordinariness of life, we are called to be "the guardians of something holy, something great, God's grace in us and about us." Rahner then asks pointedly if we will be found as true as Joseph in "guarding this Son of God whom we meet in others..."⁴

The artful preacher Frederick Buechner begins a sermon, Emmanuel, by saying that the Apostle Paul could have written to the church at Corinth, "For we preach Christ born (instead of crucified), a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles" since his birth is just as problematic as his death.

The folly, the stumbling block, is the Christian claim that God came to be with us in history. "For those who do not believe in God, it is the ultimate absurdity. For those who stand somewhere between belief and unbelief, it challenges creduity in a new way."

The incredible has happened, says Buechner, "and year after year the world in some measure stops to listen." He compared it to a snowfall on New York City in 1947 when first hydrants disappeared and then the roofs of parked cars. "The plows could not keep up with it ... By the next morning it was a different city ... More striking than anything else about it was the silence ... You listened because you could not help yourself." Christmas is a time to listen, "at the heart of all the hullabaloo you hear a silence, and at the heart of the silence you hear - whatever you hear." Ultimately, we must all decide for ourselves what we hear, what we believe, and whether the Christmas tale is true. "If it is true, it is the chief of all truths. If it is not true, it is of all truths the one perhaps that people would most have be true if they could make it so." To believe this outrageous claim might not be as difficult as we might think, suggests Buechner. The part of us that believes is "the child that continues to exist in all of us... The sense that on this one day each year two plus two adds up not to four but to a million... What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us and our own snowbound, snowblind longing for him." Buechner is an Emmanuel preacher, God is with him and so with us.⁵

David Howell