Feast of the Holy Name, January 1, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of our hearts, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Happy New Year again! It’s not just again because this is again January 1. It’s again because we observed a New Year with Central Reform Temple at Rosh Hashanah in October, and we observed a Christian New Year at the beginning of Advent in November. Now is our secular New Year. At the end of January, some among us will celebrate the Chinese New Year. These many chances to observe a new year just taunt people who eschew resolutions! On the other hand, they provide many opportunities to re-start, or re-commit for those who are resolved to do more of this or less of that! As if determining what year it is weren’t confusing enough, Christians around the world are observing this day, Sunday, January first, as The First Sunday after Christmas, or as The Feast of the Circumcision, or as the Octave of the Nativity and the Solemnity of Mary, and or as The Feast of the Holy Name – each with its own slightly different lectionary readings and appropriate hymns. I don’t have a particularly lofty theological rationale for choosing for us to observe The Feast of the Holy Name. I was drawn to the readings and the biblical idea of naming.

Our first reading is from the Torah – from what we call “the book of Numbers,” taking its name from the two census reports of the first and second generations of Israelites freed from slavery in Egypt. The Jewish name for the book is “In the Wilderness” because it tells stories of a people who learned about freedom from slavery the hard way – by wandering in the desert for forty years. The collected stories of the people are told from (or with) the perspective and understanding of much later struggles during the time of the monarchy, the Babylonian exile, and the return to Jerusalem. The stories do not romanticize or idealize the years in the wilderness; they tell of endless complaining from the people, nostalgic for the good food and the relative security of Egypt. The people were longing for the good old days when they had roofs over their heads. The stories also tell of leadership struggles and rebellions, of crisis after crisis after crisis. [1] This journey through the desert lasted two generations and was no walk in the park. The stories tell us that the journey felt more like a curse than a blessing, most of the time. So it is in this context that Moses hears the Holy One telling him to tell Aaron and Aaron’s sons to tell the people that they are blessed.

You might remember that the four-letter word that stands for the name of the Holy One is not pronounceable as a word – it is, at its closest alliteration, the sound of breath. The ancient tradition is to say a place holder word when reading aloud. Adonai (literally, my masters) is the word used in prayers. English translations don’t want to confuse things with a plural noun, so they usually render Adonai, “Lord,” in capital letters. HaShem is one of the words used outside of prayers – literally, The Name. HaShem tells Moses to tell Aaron and Aaron’s sons to tell the people that HaShem will bless and guard you; that HaShem will deal kindly and graciously with you (that is, you will have grace in the eyes of others); and that HaShem will bestow favor on you and grant you peace (that is, a deep sense of well-being). Thus MY Name (Shemi), says The Name (HaShem), will be linked with the people of Israel and I will bless them.

Now this is a circular kind of blessing if there ever was one. Tell Aaron to tell the people that they will be blessed, and as a consequence of acting like they’re blessed, they’ll identify with me and I, myself will bless them. All of the verbs in this short passage are emphatic and intense. [2] They are ongoing, incomplete actions. This is not a thing of the past, over and done with; this is about now and forever. The thing is, this three-fold blessing comes early on in the 40 years in the desert. This beautiful blessing doesn’t prevent challenges, struggles or suffering. It doesn’t prevent grumbling or disagreements. My Torah commentary suggests that, if the blessing is understood as a prayer, rather than an accomplishment, the presence of the Holy One “becomes a common hope rather than a certainty, similar to the blessing which is [both] greeting and prayer: ‘The Lord be with you’ [from the Book of Ruth, it] serves to open the hearts of those who promise and those who hear.” [3]

Do you remember that Moses and Aaron didn’t get to the promised land with the people? Do you remember the name of the one who led the people into the promised land? It was Joshua (or Yeshua), the very same name that the Angel Gabriel told Mary to give her child. The messenger of the Holy One told Mary to name her child with this Biblical name, before the child was even conceived, according to the Gospel of Luke. Joshua/Yeshua/Jesus – all mean “God saves.” When our English translation of the Bible renders the same name two different ways – Joshua in the first testament and Jesus in the second testament, it seems somehow less than honest to me.

Biblical names are not just nice sounding monikers – they convey purpose and meaning, connecting the named one to the past and the future. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to start calling Jesus by his Hebrew name, I just want you all to connect the two names in your heart, the way that I imagine Mary – or Miriam—would have connected the names in her heart.) We don’t know what she was treasuring and pondering in her heart, but we can surmise that it had to do with the prophetic hymn she sang when she encountered Elizabeth, and the promise embedded in the name of her child, of scattering the proud and bringing the powerful down a few notches and lifting up the lowly, filling those who hunger with good things and sending the wealthy away empty so that they too could be blessed. We can imagine that Mary, the God-bearer, was pondering the glory of God, and what Bishop Steven Charleston calls the holy irony that what seems weak is strong, what seems lost is being found, what seems empty is overflowing, what is broken is being mended and will be even stronger than before.

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi quotes a hymn – probably not a hymn written by Paul, but one that he learned and maybe the congregation already knew. He implores the community to be of the same mind that was in Christ Jesus – or of the same mind that you have in Christ Jesus. This is not an academic or philosophical exercise – it’s not about thinking like Christ Jesus. The Greek word that gets translated mind, comes from the word for diaphragm – the bodily location of understanding. [4] The verses that lead into our passage for this morning say, “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Then, pattern your life after Jesus who modeled a way forward through fear, through anger, through sorrow and shame, who modeled integrity so deep and strong that even the cross couldn’t extinguish it.

It occurs to me that in Jesus, God doesn’t save from. Rather, in Jesus, God saves for: for service to others and for deep listening and atonement/at-one-ment with the Eternal Name of Love. Jesus doesn’t save us from our past or our future, and in God, Jesus doesn’t save us from suffering in the present. In God, Jesus saves us for a blessing – to be a blessing, so that others see grace in us, and so that wherever we find truth and whatever it costs, we can pay because we are participating in God’s economy which means we have access to a boundless abundance of love, of shalom. May we be a blessing and so may we be blessed; and so may we be saved.

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