In Jesus' Name
A common, ordinary man with a common, ordinary name
I.
Before I moved to Millbrook, I hadn’t owned a car in over a decade. Sometime in the last year I opened the hood, probably to add wiper fluid, and thought to myself, “Let me check the oil.” Only then did I discover there was no dipstick. Cars have become “black boxes” and many appliances carry a warning that you will void the warranty if you open the case or break the seal.
We are losing basic know-how. AI promises to do our writing (if not our thinking) for us, and technology, from lane-departure warnings to automatic high beams, to the FAA experimenting with reducing flight crews down to just one pilot, is increasingly doing things for us, without us even knowing what is being done or how. Remember the 737-MAX?
This has been going on for some time now. After all, few people boarding a plane know how to fly one, or even really understand the physics that keeps the thing in the sky. We’ve called these technologies “blessings.” But with each blessing we seem to lose something, some basic knowledge, some basic know-how.
II.
Today we read that God commands Aaron, the priest, and Aaron’s sons, who are also priests, to bless the people of Israel.
The Hebrew word for blessing means “to fall on the knees,” hence the very ancient posture of kneeling in prayer. It is in this posture of prayer that we receive the peace that comes from knowing God is looking at us with love and approval.
It is from this same position that we return blessing to God. Whereas God gives us peace, we give Him thanks and praise. The whole exchange is a blessing. Blessing isn’t just something that “goes forth” from God it “comes back” to Him too.
God uses words to bless us, just as we use words to bless Him in return. And God uses the word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to come closer us.
This is part of the basic know-how of the Christian faith.
III.
In today’s gospel Luke writes:
“at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”
Jesus was (and still is) a common name, so we must read this — especially the part about the name given by the angel — to mean that God meant to take a common name, that He wanted this name. Perhaps it foreshadowed Peter’s dream, when God spoke to him, saying, “What God has cleansed, you must not call common.”[1]
But Paul goes even further when he writes:
“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…”
That’s a little like saying that “at the name of Smith” or “at the name of John” — such common names! And remember what bending the knee means. It means blessing.
At the name of Jesus everyone will participate in the blessing.
IV.
We can all agree that the best way to learn is for someone to show us how. That requires that the teacher put himself in the place of the pupil, in an attempt to communicate.
That is why God took a common, everyday name for Himself, so that we could learn God’s ways directly from Him, so we could see how it’s done.
God says:
“they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.”
A name signifies all that something is. When Adam named the creatures, he wasn’t just recognizing them, in the way we teach children to recognize a dog, or a cow, or an elephant in a picture book. He was declaring all that the animals were, in their totality.
This was the beginning of education, which means to draw out what is already within. Adam did not live in a world of black boxes that he could not explain, or that broke and had their warranties voided if he opened them up to human understanding.
He lived in a literate world, which presupposed that it was an understandable world, not in a world that evolved by chance, but a world that had been spoken into being by the divine logic of God’s word. In Adam’s world communication was possible.
And so, when God named His own Son Jesus, He was restoring the openness, the intelligence, and the understandability — all of which is to say the blessing — of the original creation to us. God is saying that, “By this common name, Jesus, you and I will once more have the world in common. It need no longer be cursed. In fact, I will make all things new.”
V.
Today is the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. It’s always on January 1, but January 1 is not always on a Sunday, so, for most of us, it will only be attended every several years.
This day tells us that the name of Jesus is important. It is, as I’ve said, a common name, but it has been singled out and set apart. It has, in Paul’s words, been raised above every other name.
This means the name of Jesus has been set apart to signify all that God has chosen to tell us about Himself. God has not chosen to tell us everything about Himself, but in Jesus Christ, He tells us everything we need to know to enter His new creation. This is called salvation.
The problem with seeking other names for God, of looking for other names besides Jesus to follow, is that these names are not the Name.
Even in Jesus’ day the Jewish claim to be the exclusive people of God offended the pagan mind. The pagan mind sought to reconcile human diversity by an appeal to diversity itself. It sought to explain change by saying change is all there is. Rome would have gladly added the Hebrew God to its pantheon next to Mars and Zeus.
But Jesus’ Jewishness did not and still does not allow us to do that — and Jesus is either the Jewish Messiah or He is not the Messiah at all. The very idea of the Christ is a Jewish one. The rest of the world never thought it needed a Christ to save it — and it still doesn’t.
To the Jews alone came the unique revelation, perception, and insight that the world needs repairing, and that Messiah was the one to do it.
For our faith to make any sense it must start with what is mundane, common, and small: basic things that we can understand. In other words, no black boxes. Cars with dipsticks. Words we’ve written for ourselves. The Christian needs to start his or her journey to heaven with things he can understand. A common, ordinary man with a common, ordinary name is someone we can understand, someone we can relate to, someone who can teach us. That is why the name of Jesus is so important.
May I ask you, is there another name that you place above Jesus’ name? Or, if not above, at least on the same level as His? Would you consider removing that name (or names) from your lips?
Moses tells us that God did not chose Israel because they “were more numerous than other peoples, [but because they] were the fewest of all peoples.”[2]
God does not choose us because we are great or wise or rich or smart. He doesn’t polish our best parts but gets to work on the stuff that’s wounded and stinking and festering. The parts that can’t see or hear or think straight. That part of us that has forgotten how to do basic things like praying and blessing and praising.
Let me conclude by emphasizing something very basic, something very common: the blessing with which every service of worship ends. God said to Moses, “[the priests] shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.” That is what I am doing now. I am putting the Name of Jesus on you. I am pronouncing God’s blessing on you. It is now yours to receive and yours to give back to God in mutual love, adoration, and respect.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Preached at St. Peter’s, Lithgow, on January 1, 2023.