What’s in a name? Plenty actually. Frederick Buechner, writer and theologian, says this about his name: “it’s my name. it’s pronounced Beekner. If somebody mispronounces it in some foolish way, I have the feeling that what is foolish is me. If somebody forgets it, I feel that it’s I who am forgotten. There is something about it that embarrasses me in just the same way that there’s something about me that embarrasses me.”
I totally get that. I have an unusual name and it’s actually my middle name. Try telling Medicare that I am not Jule C. Gill but J. Carlyle Gill. Or try telling the DMV. The government just doesn’t like middle names or doesn’t believe in them. When I go to the dentist, I have to say, “Listen if you call me Jule, I won’t answer. I’m just not Jule.” But the worst of it was when I was a child and the role was called for the first time in my first grade class. Carlyle can be mangled in so many ways. I always felt embarrassed and ready to crawl under my desk.
The truth is: we are our names. That simple. Biblical people knew this without any explanation. A name was presence. So when they talk about the name of God, they are talking about the presence of God. Name – presence. Presence-name. Same thing. Like in our collects. We pray in the Name of Jesus Christ – in other words, in Jesus’ presence – right here and now.
In the gospel for this fourth and last Sunday of Advent there are four names. In those names, just in those four names are all we need to know about the Good News, the Gospel, the Christian faith – whatever we call it. No need to go to seminary. No need to take advance systematic theology. It’s all there in those four names. I promise.
First, there is Joseph. This is Joseph’s Sunday. The other two years in the lectionary cycle focus on Mary – we hear her magnificat those years. But this year it’s Joseph. What an unusual man he is. We should know just from this quiet, in the shadows man much about what is to happen. Even before the child is born roles are reversed, things turned upside down. Biblical men are usually front and center, warrior types, kings, leaders of one sort or another, prophets: think Moses or David. But Joseph is a quiet, shadowy guy while his soon to be wife is the gutsy, assertive, prophetic one who proclaims that the mighty will be cast down from their thrones and the lowly lifted up. But Joseph is a quiet, rather ordinary guy. In The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible where you can look up all manner of biblical folks, Joseph the Carpenter, only rates on short little paragraph! Way less than John the Baptist!
Joseph’s betrothed is pregnant. Now in their time engagement was as good as marriage and just as legal. They just hadn’t moved in together. Joseph knew he wasn’t the father. This was humiliating and shameful as it might be for any man. When this happened – no matter how she got pregnant – the woman could be stoned to death. In some parts of the Middle East, this is still true. At a minimum, Joseph would have to divorce her. In order for justice to be done and for Joseph to save face, and maintain his manliness, one of those two courses of action had to be followed. But a very, very interesting thing happens: Joseph listens to a dream – a dream in which an angel appears and says, “Do not be afraid Joseph. This child is from the Holy Spirit. You are to name him Jesus.” Joseph could have said, “Yea, really. Tell me another one. It’s not looking good for me here. So I gotta do something here.” But he didn’t. He did a rather unmanly thing. He listened to his dream. He listened to the angel.
I don’t know about Joseph’s time but listening to angels now is a little, well, suspect. Who does that? I mean how can we be sure it’s the real deal? All I know is that I have heard an angel myself and it changed by life. At one of my worst moments, in the depths of chemotherapy where death was a real option, I heard a voice clear as yours or mine address me by name and say, “Carlyle, you have nothing to fear in life or in death.” I realized in that dazzling epiphany I had been afraid of living. I changed that behavior and began to live, really live, take risks, get out there. Joseph changed. He did as the angel told him taking Mary as his wife protecting her from divorce or death. He became midwife to this birth.
The angel tells Joseph that he is to name the child Jesus. Remembering that a name is a presence, we need to know just what the name Jesus means. It is from the Hebrew root that is found in the word Jeshua which means salvation which actually translates as spacious, broad, big or to use a more current word, inclusive. The name Jesus – as the person Jesus –saves by being spacious, broad, inclusive. Nothing, no one is outside the saving (read broad, spacious, inclusive) embrace of Jesus – Savior, embracer.
Matthew, the author of this morning’s gospel says that all of this happened to fulfill the Hebrew prophet Isaiah’s prediction that a virgin would conceive and bear a son whose name would be Emmanuel. Matthew wanted everyone to know that this was no fly by night birth. This was the real deal. The birth so long expected. Emmanuel. We all know that is Hebrew for God with us. With us.
So, there you have it. Three of the four names. They say it all. What’s in a name? Everything.
Joseph: ordinary guy trying to do the best he can, the right thing.
Emmanuel: extraordinary, God with us, in the flesh
Jesus: the One with us who saves us, includes us with a broad embrace.
What does this mean for you and me as we lean into the Feast of the Incarnation on this fourth and last Sunday in the season of Advent? We are much like Joseph. We are ordinary people, you and I. We won’t even get a half a paragraph in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible! We too are trying to live good lives, doing the best we can. Are we to believe that the author of creation, the Presence animating the cosmos, the extraordinary, came to be with us in the flesh? Is the presence of God to be found in life, in ordinary life, in your life and mine? If the gospel, the good news is to be believed, the answer is a resounding Yes!
Does it really mean that no matter who we are, no matter what we have done, no matter what, that we are saved – embraced, included, loved, held – by this God with us whose name is Jesus? Well, if the gospel, the good news is to be believed, the answer is a resounding Yes!
Well, Mary, the Mother of God, the fourth name in this morning’s gospel, pondered all of this in her heart. So, after we ponder all of this good news in our hearts – that God is with us ordinary people as one who embraces us as we are, and we decide it’s true, true for us, saving actually, then we might become “theotokos” God bearers, Mary’s other name in the Greek – what she actually was. As medieval mystic Meister Eckhart said.
“We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? What good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.”
May it be so for you and for me. Amen.