Dear friends: Grace be to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
It is the eighth day. The day of circumcision. The day of naming. Today’s Gospel Lesson indicates that Mary remembers the instruction of the angel from months earlier about the name of the child. Undoubtedly she talked about those instructions with Joseph and, typical of their lives of obedience, they named the child as the angel had instructed them.
We call the name “Jesus” in English. That is our translation of the name that comes to us from the Greek language. They call the name ΄Ιησους. That, of course is the Greek translation of the name that was used in the Aramaic speaking world in which the child grew up. They called the name ישועה which is a contraction of the earlier Hebrew יהושועה.
What is fun about biblical names — like ישועה and ancient names in general — is that the names mean something. Biblically, for me, one of the best examples comes from the naming fo the children of Hosea.
The children were given names that reinforced Hosea’s words of prophecy to the nation. The first child was named יזרעאל which means “God sows” or “may God made fruitful.” The second child, a daughter, was named ﬥא־רחמה which means “not pitied. The third child he disowned, naming him לא עמי, “not my people.” His child-ren were walking reminders of God’s judgment against the people.
Ancient names also described the circumstances of the birth experience as in the story of the angels’ visit to Abraham and Sarah. Remember Sarah’s reaction to the announcement that she would bare a child in her old age? The child’s name described the reaction for all time. The meaning of the Hebrew name יצחק or Isaac is “she laughed.”
What about ישועה, the name of the one whose coming we celebrate during these twelve days? The name has come to mean “salvation.” But the word is a contraction and it has a meaning that came about from the joining of two other words in Hebrew. They were words that might very well have been the cry of a mother as she suffered through the pains of childbirth in a Bethlehem stable.
It has been a long time, but I can still remember the sounds of labor from my experience from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Even with modern diagnostic equipment, even with modern pain-killing drugs and techniques, and even with a trained medical staff, I still heard labor-induced cries to God coming every corner, from every room of the labor and delivery unit of the hospitals where our sons were born. Before Erick was born — as Nan and I listened to one particular woman lift up her prayers — Nan instructed me that if she ever got to that point, I was to stick a wash rag in her mouth.
How much more difficult must the birth process have been in Bethlehem of 2,000 years ago. Surely Mary must have raised up a cry to God for help in getting her through that night for this was the most precarious moment in the lives of both mother and child. She must have cried out יהושועה! It is a combination of the Hebrew name for God — יהוה — and the Hebrew word for “help!” — שוע!
“Yahweh, help!” It is a cry made from pain. I am not as bad as my friend in Boston, but I do have a tendency toward sympathy pain. How curious to take on the back pain of labor. I can’t even imagine the intensity that leads expectant mothers to cry out in pain.
But pain isn’t limited to the experience of beginning life. For we experience many times of pain in life — both physical and psychic — and we are frequently driven to the cry, “Yahweh, help!”
Despite all of our attempts to control our world, it will not be controlled. We are plagued by disease. We suffer the separation from those we love. We fail. We don’t live up to the expectations that we make for ourselves or that others make for us. We are abused by people who are supposed to defend and protect us. We wonder if we are of any value.
How do we deal with the pain? In many different ways, it seems to me. We all have our own ways of coping. Some of those ways are health and life-giving. Others: not so much. Some of us rely on friends and conversation. Some rely on physical activity to release the tension of their pain. Some try to find consolation in alcohol and drugs. Some try to work out the pain in the privacy of their own heart and mind. Some seek professional counseling.
As helpful as some of those techniques might be, Mothers, understand Mary’s cry. Mothers understand how the pain can drive one to the cry יהושועה! “Yahweh, help!”
The beauty of the Christmas season is that it reminds us how help has come, how salvation has come — in the name of Jesus. Isaiah’s prophecy is filled with names for this promised one: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace? But the name given to Mary by the angel is such a good name — even given its development: יהושועה, ישועה, ΄Ιησους, Jesus.
- This is the name that identifies the Savior who was sent by God to teach something about the kind of focus that our lives ought to take — a focus on the kind of love that seeks justice for all people.
- This is the name that identifies the Savior who was sent by God to defeat all the forces of evil that pervade our world.
- This is the name that identifies the Savior who was sent by God to suffer the death that we deserve because of God’s desire that we remain God’s people for all eternity
- This is the name, Jesus, given to Mary and Joseph by the angel because it is the name borne by the one sent by God in answer to all our prayers for help.
Because of all that God has done for us through the presence in our world of the one who bore that name, we respond according to the instruction of Paul in his letter to the Philippians, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Amen.
Copyright © 2012 The Rev. Gary L. Froseth. All rights reserved.
