What's in a Name? (Sermon 12-19-10)

Matthew 1:18-25


When I was a kid, like all good children, I loved Dr. Seuss books. I loved Fox in Sox, One Fish Two Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, but most of all, if I remember correctly, I loved the story of The Sneetches. If you don’t remember the story, it starts out this way:

Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches had bellies with stars.
The Plain-Belly Sneetches had none upon thars.
Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small.
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.

But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches
Would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.”
With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort
“We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”
And, whenever they met some, when they were out walking,
They’d hike right on past them without even talking.

The story then goes on to tell of the arrival of one Sylvester McMonkey McBean, a hero of capitalism, the fix-it-up-chappie, who builds a sort of Ruth Goldberg style tattoo machine which can place a star upon the belly of any sneetch. Of course, then, chaos ensues as the Sneetches which had formerly had stars upon thars now wanted no stars upon thars due to the Sneetches which did not have stars upon thars now having stars upon thars. And Mr. McBean, ever ready to make his living, supplies a similar star removal machine. And eventually, all of the Sneetches are running in and out of both machines, paying their money, putting stars on and having them removed, until nobody knows which was which first.

Now, I have long believed that my brain works in funny ways and often draws connections between thoughts which are in no-way related, and here is the proof: every Advent and Christmas season, without fail, and some point while passing a nativity scene and observing the star which is often glued to the peak of the roof of the stable, or when passing some other Christmas decoration including the star which the Magi followed, I will inevitably here the words “the Star-Belly Sneetches had bellies with stars. The Plain-Belly Sneetches had none upon thars,” somewhere in the recesses of my brain.



I don’t know why; aside from the use of a star, the two stories are completely unrelated. But, it is what it is. So, earlier this past week, I drove over here to the church to pick up something which I had left behind last Sunday. And, of course, while doing so, given that I was heading to the church, I was thinking of the things I’d like to talk about on this Sunday; in other words I was allowing my mind to wander. And as I came across the river, and I saw the lighted star on the crane on the other side of the bridge, I heard the inevitable words “the Plain-Belly Sneetches had none upon thars.”

And in that moment of unencumbered free-association, my mind began to run down a handful of trails all at once. I began thinking about the story itself, about prejudice and how we classify ourselves into separate groups which each claim a sort of superiority; at the same time I thought about stars and their uses as marks of distinction, like getting a gold star in class; and I also was simultaneously thinking of how people, or people groups, tend to invent their own sorts of gold stars and merit systems by which they achieve them in order to set themselves apart from those who do not have a similar gold star and system.

We want so desperately to make a name for ourselves.

Names are an interesting subject. In our culture, we don’t attach much value to a name in and of itself. It wasn’t too long ago, in the grand scheme of things, that even within our own culture names were meant to symbolize things. There were meanings behind names and that meaning was intended to convey some sense of who that person was, or who their parents wanted them to be.

Now we tend to view that almost as a product of more primitive cultures. Our names don’t particularly mean anything. Like my name, Scott Smith. I was neither born in Scotland, nor do I frequently bend metal to my will for the sake of monetary gain. My name doesn’t signify anything in that sense.

We think in terms not unlike those of Juliet in Shakespeare’s play: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Of course, this isn’t entirely true. In fact, if anything, names now carry only a vague aesthetic connotation to them. You have strong names and weak names; hard names and soft names; names that make you think of rock stars, and names that make you think of dentists. In fact, there are some recent studies that seem to suggest that there is a sort of unconscious, prelingual connection between the way we form certain sounds with our mouths and the images we choose to naturally associate them with. Like rough, spiky sorts of words we associate with rough, spiky objects. Smooth, rounded words we associate with smooth, rounded objects, and so on.

At most, there may be, for some, a lingering idea that there ought to be a connection between your name and your reputation. Many of us still connect with the historic idea of having a good name. Proverbs tells us that “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.”

In Biblical culture, though, a name was much more than a mere aesthetic value, or even something as important as your reputation. Your name was who you were. Much like those primitive cultures, names conveyed, in a certain sense, the essence of who you were. They could denote character, memorialize a particular event, or even make reference to your destiny.

In a sense, Biblical names seem almost allegorical. Like in Paul Bunyan’s “Pilgrims Progress,” many of the names in the Bible, in their Hebrew form, categorize exactly the function of the person in the story.

Of course, naming in the Bible is as old as mankind itself. One of the earliest tasks given to Adam, in Genesis chapter 2,  was the naming of the animals, and he gave his wife Eve her name as well. There is some interesting pseudo-theology behind the concept of names and what they call Adamic language; but without going into all that, there is an idea throughout the Scriptures that names are a powerful business connected to the very core of who the person is.

As we move through the Scriptures, we see God Himself step in often to give someone a new name: Jacob becomes Israel (one who wrestles with God) after he wrestles the angel, Abram becomes Abraham (father of many nations) based upon the covenant which God established with him, Simon becomes Peter because, well, that’s a more heated issue, all the way through to Revelations where it is promised that whoever perseveres in the faith will be given a “white stone” with a name written on it known only to that person. What’s that about? I have no idea.

However, what we do know is that names in the Bible are a serious business and not something just thrown about.

This is no different when it comes to the names given to Christ. Now, debatably, there are hundreds of names given to Christ, if you include all the names supposedly assigned to the coming Messiah in the Old Testament.

Today, however, we see two of the names definitely assigned to the Christ: Jesus and Immanuel. Now, when I was younger and I looked at this passage, I raised a somewhat naïve objection. Looking at the passage itself:

21She will bear a son, and(F) you shall call his name Jesus,(G) for he will save his people from their sins." 22(H) All this took place(I) to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
 23(J) "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
   and they shall call his name(K) Immanuel"

I thought, “wait a minute, that’s not a fulfillment of that prophecy- the angel tells Joseph to name Him Jesus, but the prophecy says His name will be Immanuel.” But of course, it makes more sense when we realize that the name confers a sense of who the person is, and may not be their “given name” in the way we think of it.

So, Jesus is essentially His given name, and Immanuel is one of His titles. Interestingly enough, Immanuel is only used once in the whole of the New Testament, and that’s right here, coupled with the name Jesus. Now let’s think about that for a minute.

As I just mentioned, there were a handful of times in the Scriptures where God steps in and names someone, or changes someone’s name. But, as Christians, we believe that Christ isn’t just any other human being, or even just a prophet. Christ is God Himself, He is THE revelation of who God is. Who God is and what He is about is encapsulated in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We are told by Paul that “all the fullness of the deity” dwelt within Christ.

Christ is THE center of the revelation of God. For us as Christians, all of the Scriptures, whether going forwards or backwards from this one event, are interpreted through the lens of Christ. Christ tells the disciples on the road to Emmaus that all the Scriptures exist for the sole purpose of pointing to Him and find their fulfillment in Him.

So, when God gives these names for Jesus, and knowing that names indicate a sense of who the person is, we have, in effect, God stepping in to NAME HIMSELF. These names, these words, are God’s statement about who He is in the person of Jesus Christ.

Now, let’s look at those names for a bit. Immanuel, as we’ve already discussed, means in the Hebrew “God with us.” In the case of Christ, it indicates that in Christ, God has come down to be amongst us, as one of us, in human, fleshly form. It indicates the special relationship which we have with God through Jesus. God is now “with us” in Him.

The name Jesus, which we use, interesting enough, is actually the Latinized version of the Hebrew name Yeshua. And just like the name Immanuel, Jesus was not the only person to have the name Yeshua. What is the English version, apart from the Latin adaptation, of Yeshua? It is the name Joshua.

Now the name Jesus, or Joshua, or Yeshua, often translated plainly as “savior,” actually means “Yaweh saves” or “God saves.” Now, who was Joshua in the Old Testament? Well, he is the man who takes over and finishes the ministry of Moses, the man who leads them into the promised land. Now, what was the ministry of Moses? What phrase do we often hear repeated throughout the New Testament which often ends with the words “of Moses?” Fill in the blank: the (blank) of Moses. Answer: the law.

Joshua fulfills the ministry of Moses by leading the people into the promised land. In Christ, we have Jesus, fulfilling the law of Moses, effectively taking over and ending the purpose of the ministry of Moses, the purpose of the Law, and leading us into the New Covenant, the promised land of a relationship with God based not upon the Law which lead us to it, but on the presence of God with us. It is God who saves, and who is now with us, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of this little child in the manger.

In naming Himself in these ways, God tells us who He is, and what He is about. He is the one who saves us, He is with us, that is how He wants to be known. He is about saving us, about graciously redeeming His creation. He does so by being united to it. He is about being with us in the midst of it all; in the midst of all the craziness, all the joys and sorrows, all the defeats and triumphs, all the moments of conflict and all the moments of peace, He is with us, and it is this relationship with us that is our salvation. We are saved by His divine act of joining Himself to us.

And in this naming, He names us too. We are not the ones who do the saving, we are not the ones who do the uniting, we do not achieve here. We are being saved, we are the ones whom He has chosen to be with.

I know I’ve often used the doctor/patient analogy before, but if you’ll indulge me to use it once more, think of it like going to see a surgeon. No one goes to a surgeon and says “now this is what I plan to do, I’m going to make an incision here in my abdomen, then I’m going to, with the use of a mirror, route around in there a bit till I find the problem, then I’m going to cut it out and stitch myself back up. Now, what I need from you is this: obviously I’m going to be using some local anasthetics, which means my hands are probably going to get a bit shaky part way through, so I’m going to need you to help steady my hand a bit. Additionally, I’m a bit new at this, so I’m going to need a few pointers, a coach of sorts, I want you in my corner when I do this, play Mick to my Rocky.”

And yet, this is often how we treat God. We set our spiritual salvation as the pinnacle of our achievement, our very large stars upon ours. But God comes down, to be with us, to be the God who saves us, even from our silly ideas about doctoring ourselves. He takes over the ministry of salvation and leads us into a relationship with Him based on His own work.

In Christ we realize that “Sneetches are Sneetches, and no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches,” rather, we all are marked by the same star which the magi followed, the star which signals Christ. It is God who has saved us, it is He who is with us, that is our distinction, that is where we derive our name from.