“And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS,
for He will save His people from their sins.”
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God named the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he named ‘night.’
… [skipping ahead] Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature that was its name. So, the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals” (Gen 1:1-5a; 2:19; italics mine)
Brethren, it is less than a week until the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, and here we find ourselves recounting the Creation Narrative. What do these two quotes from Genesis 1 & 2 have to do with one another? And what is their relationship to today’s Gospel Reading from Matthew? Names. Today is all about names.
What makes a man a man? Here, I mean: what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be created in the image of God? Christian philosophy gives us many sophisticated answers: humans uniquely reflect God’s nature through their reason, creativity, morality; or it is our capacity for love and relationship that makes us like God. Maybe it is our ability to communicate, to give expression to our cognitive processes. Sure, maybe. These may be good descriptors of what makes humans distinct, that is, from bugs, and fishes, and animals. But these aren’t the answers that Genesis gives. These are not the parallels between us and God that Genesis draws. When God says, “Let us make man in our image,” in Genesis 1:26, we must keep in mind what proceeds this statement and what comes after. We must contextualize the statement.
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.
“In the beginning, God created [בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים] the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1).
וַיַּבְדֵּל אֱלֹהִים, בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ.
“… And God divided [וַיַּבְדֵּל אֱלֹהִים] the light from the darkness” (v. 4b)
וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם, וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה
“… And God named [וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים] the light Day, and the darkness he named Night” (v. 5a).
In Genesis 1, God is a Creator of things; he is a divider of things; he is a namer of things. He gives meaning to created things through names.
“Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them” (Gen 2:19b).
וַיִּקְרָא הָאָדָם שֵׁמוֹת, לְכָל-הַבְּהֵמָה וּלְעוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם, וּלְכֹל, חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה
“And the man gave names to all the animals, and to the fowl of the air, and to every living thing of the field” (v. 20a).
God is (1) Creator, (2) divider, (3) namer. He is a giver of meaning. Man is (1) divider, and (2) namer. He too is a giver of meaning through names.
From the very moment of man’s creation human names—all names—have had meaning. Ādām, “of the earth.” Gee, wonder how that name came about. Khavāh, [or as we know her], “Eve,” living one, i.e., “because she was the mother of all the living” (Gen 2:20). You see, names are pregnant with meaning, and hope, and expectation. Or at least, they once were. In antiquity, across cultural, geographical, and religious borders, children were named with intention: in honor of an ancestor, as a prayer for the personal embodiment of a particular virtue—Andrēas, Andrew, “courage”; Eirēnē, Irene, “peace”; Alētheia, “truth.” It is a novelty in the history of human civilization to name a child “Blaykelee” [spelled B-l-a-y-k-e-l-e-e], or “Saevya” or “Wynn” or “Roneli.” In doing some research for this sermon, I actually came across a TikTok video entitled “Baby Names Without Meaning That We Think Would Be Cute Anyway.” In fact, there were… hundreds… of these sorts of videos! And no, I do not have a TikTok account. This was purely for research! Now I ask, for such a child—where is the prayer, the expectation, the blessing, the promise in their name? To be human is to be a giver and discerner of meaning. And to be given a name is to receive a blessing.
In today’s Gospel Reading, we hear many, many names (many names that any responsible Orthodox Deacon would take the time to read once over before chanting the Gospel…). These names, like all biblical names are ripe with meaning. Yes, we heard St. Matthew’s genealogy of our Lord, and at first inspection, it is just that: a genealogy, a long, boring list of names. I pray you did not begin to daydream during the reading! For here, in a long, boring list of names is the history and promise of our salvation.
Av-rāhām (Abraham): “Father of a multitude [of nations]”
Dāvīd (David): “[the] beloved one”
Shǝlomoh (Solomon): “peace”
Iōseph (Joseph): “Yahweh adds to / Yahweh multiplies”
And… Yǝhōshua’ (Joshua / Jesus): “Yahweh saves”
Here, in St. Matthew’s Gospel, we hear our salvation history recounted in names. We read—in names—the hopes and dreams and promises of a people who have sinned (Gen 3); who have been called by God out of relative obscurity to bless the nations (Gen 12); who have trusted God in instances of deep betrayal and genuine reconciliation (Gen 37-50); who have been delivered by God but have returned to the worship of idols; who have fallen into adultery, and yet, repented (Ps 50/51); who have walked in wisdom and righteousness (1 Kngs 6); who have felt abandoned and alone in a foreign land (Jer 39-43); and who have yearned to receive ‘Immanū-el (“God with us”, cf. Isa 7:14), to see the Righteous Jacob’s prophecy fulfilled:
“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to him shall be the obedience of the nations” (Gen 49:10).
Who is this king, this lawgiver, the “expectation of the nations”? It is none other than the one named by St. Joseph, at the express command of the Archangel Gabriel in a dream; it is Yǝhōshua’, Iēsus, Jesus, the one who will “save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21b).
In the naming of this little child, born in humility in a lowly manger, in a cattle stall, surrounded by lowly people—the Lord’s handmaid and shepherds—in the naming of this child the salvation of mankind is heralded, both figuratively and literally:
“Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior [Yǝhōshua’, Jesus], who is Christ the Lord’” (Luke 2:8-11).
Who is born this day? A king! Yes, a king. Who is born this day? Mary’s child. Yes, a miracle child, to a Virgin Mother. Who is born this day? A carpenter’s son, a Galilean, one of the House of David: Ben-Iōseph. Yes, yes, yes. But who… is born… this day? Jesus, Yǝhōshua’, “Yahweh saves,” has been born this day in the City of David, in Bethlehem. “And you shall call his name JESUS for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21b).
“He will save his people from their sins.” Truly, the Savior of the Jews is born this day. But elsewhere the Apostle says, quoting the Prophet Hosea,
“I will call them My people, who were not my people,
And her beloved, who was not beloved.
And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not My people,’
There they shall be called sons of the living God” (Rom 9:25-26).
Jesus, “The Lord saves.” The Lord who saves his people, AND those who were not even his people. The Lord who saves and who makes those saved sons of the Living God; he is born this day.
Brethren, although there were many beautiful promises and hopes personified in our Lord’s forefathers—David, Solomon, Abraham—there was no “Jesus” before Jesus. Yes, there was a “Joshua”—Moses’ protégé and the leader of the armies of Israel into the Promised Land—who was a type of Christ, but not of Abraham’s seed was there a “Jesus” before our Jesus. And he is more than Savior: he is the summation of all the prayers and promises which precede him.
Jesus is the Savior, who also loves “[his] beloved [dōd, Dāvīd, David] who was not beloved” (cf. Rom 9). Jesus is Savior, who also is called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace [‘peace,’ shālōm, Shǝlomoh, Solomon]” (Isa 9:6b). Jesus is Savior; and he is also father and ruler of many nations (Av-rāhām, Abraham), as Isaiah says:
In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean” (Isa 11:10-11).
And St. Peter interprets this prophecy:
“But you [Church] are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God” (1 Pet 2:9-10a).
It is Jesus alone who is both product of and fulfillment of all the faithful generations which came before him.
“What is in a name? … What is so special about a name?” asks one Juliet, in a famously, frequently quoted Shakespearean soliloquy. To quote Phillips Brooks’ and Lewis Redners’ old, old hymn, [What is in a name?] “The hopes and fears of all the years.” (repeat) It was this little Christ child; the Christ child whom we adore, and worship, and magnify as the consubstantial Son, begotten of the Father before time began; in whom all the expectations and promises of the nations (Gen 49) were met. “What is so special about a name?”
“Before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name” (Isa 49:1a).
“And you shall call his name JESUS, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21).
Through the prayers of our holy fathers, and all the Holy Fore-fathers, whom we commemorate this day, O Lord, Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!