On What’s in a Name
December 29, 2024
Traceymay Kalvaitis
Isaiah 61:11
For as the earth brings forth its shoots and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
John 1: 1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Luke 2: 21
After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
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Today’s sermon is titled On What’s in a Name.
How many times have you spent a minute or two or three in conversation with someone while your brain searched frantically (FRANTICALLY!) for their name? I was nearly 50 before I made a commitment to myself to stop allowing myself to get caught in that situation. I made a commitment to myself that I would just admit, right up front, that I could not remember their name and unless they had already called me by name, I did not assume that they remembered my name either. It took me a while to practice and come up with wording that felt at least a little less awkward. I usually say, “I know I know your name, but I can’t recall it right now. My name is Traceymay, please remind me of yours.” I have said some version of this hundreds of times and not once has anyone ever seemed offended that I had to ask; quite the contrary, it always (and I mean always) breaks any tension, especially for me. The key is saying something like this soon enough, right away, if possible or else the conversation goes on too long and it becomes nearly impossible to work it in gracefully.
Names are important. As soon as we state our name, the other person begins to search their minds for patterns of familiarity; when we hear someone’s name, we immediately launch into the same process, searching for some point of reference that will begin to shape the context that we will create for that specific person, and that specific person alone. Names are really important. Names become part of our identity and when people are able to call us by our names, we naturally feel not only seen, but recognized and accepted.
Most cultures have a ceremony of welcoming a new baby into the community. For Jesus, the naming ceremony and his bris, or circumcision, occurred on the eighth day. When Joseph and Mary were asked what the child’s name would be, they would have replied, in their native language of Aramaic, “His name is Yeshua ישוע” (pron. ye-shoo). The name was spelled YESHUA but the a was silent, Yeshu. The Gospels were later written in Greek and Yeshu was translated as Yesous (pron. yay-su). We can see what a small jump it is from Yesous to the Latin lesu (pron. yay-su) and eventually to Jesus. The name Yeshua means “salvation or deliverance.” In English, Yeshua and Jesus are both translated as Joshua.**
Jesus was a very common name in the first century. I used to wonder why Jesus did not have a more unusual name, but the more I learn about the obstacles he had to overcome in his life and ministry, I understand that having a more prophetic name would have probably created grounds for skepticism and criticism to take root and grow right from the very beginning. Perhaps the fact that Jesus had a very common name allowed others to approach him with familiarity, laying the foundations for trust and receptivity.
There is another name for Jesus that we find in the opening lines of the Gospel of John. If you have negative connotations with the name Jesus, this name may be especially helpful to you. The Gospel of John was transcribed thirty or fourty years after the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, and because of the era in which it was written, not long after the end of the first century, perhaps 110 A.D., it was much more heavily influenced by Greek culture and thought.
The philosophical underpinnings of Aristotle were allowing humanity to think about the concept of God in a much more expansive context.
Listen again to the opening of the Gospel of John; this portion is referred to as the “Hymn to the Word.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him…What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Another name for Jesus is Word or, in the original Greek, Logos.
Let’s think first about what a word is. A word is a collection of symbols that correlate to specific sounds, right? We have been taught that the letter T makes a tuh sound. When combined with an h an e and an o we have the word Theo which is another word for God. Words are arrangements of symbols, with agreed upon sounds, that represent people, places, things, and ideas.
The Greek translation of Word is Logos. Substituting Word with Logos, the original text of the first chapter of John reads as follows: “In the beginning was Logos and Logos was with God, and Logos was God. Logos was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Logos…What has come into being through Logos was life, and the life was the light of all people.” To understand Logos we go back to Aristotle and Greek philosophy and we see that Logos is synonymous with reason. And let us not overlook this commonly used word, reason. We often misuse reason for excuse, as in, “Do you have a reason for being late?” A much more interesting question, using the full meaning of the word reason would be, “Do we have a reason for being?” According to the encyclopedia Britannica, reason or Logos is defined as follows: “Logos is the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning. The concept is also found in Indian, Egyptian, and Persian philosophical and theological systems. It became particularly significant in Christian writings and doctrines as a vehicle for conceiving the role of Jesus Christ as the principle of God active in the creation and the continuous structuring of the cosmos.”*** This reminds me of that fascinating verse in Genesis, chapter 1 verse 26; Genesis 1:26 reads, “Let us make mankind in our image.” Let us make mankind in our image. Do you hear the plurality? Who do you imagine the Diving plural “us” to be? How could we ever, truly, properly name the source and ground for all being? And yet, we are compelled to try, because names are important for engaging in relationship.
Friends, I encourage you to not be confined to names for God and for Jesus if they do not resonate with you. Many of us have been negatively influenced by dogmatic people who may have talked about God and Jesus but they did not reflect the light and love that would have welcomed us and assured us and supported us in being curious and questioning so we could discover the truth for ourselves. Too many of us have been made to feel as if we are on the outside of something and hoping, if we are worthy, we might be admitted in. It’s a feeling very much like not being known, not being called by name, not being acknowledged, seen, welcomed, or accepted. We all know that feeling. That is not of God. So, Friends, I encourage you to consider names that mean something to you, names that would invite you, names that would welcome you, names that would resonate. There are many biblical invitations for us to do so, both in the First and Second Testament scriptures.
It is written in 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God.” One of my favorite words for God is from the First Testament Jewish scriptures; it is derived from the story where Moses asks what name he should give to the people to refer to the Divine Presence that had guided them out of slavery and the answer was “I am that I am.” This name is considered so holy it is not written with all the letters, but out of respect and acknowledgement that something so infinite should not be confined to a name, only the consonants are used. YHWH, without the vowels the consonants can only be made with the breath, without moving the tongue or the lips. Some say this word is the very sound of our breath, in every language, made by every living, breathing person. Open your mouth and without moving, and also without forming, so completely relaxed, letting only the breath move…listen…Yah…Weh…Yah…Weh. Every baby’s first breath, every person’s last breath. Yah…Weh…Yah…Weh. The name of God in every breath.
In closing, I give you permission and encouragement to explore the different names for the Divine. I invite you to imagine, to be curious, and to try on some of the other names the Bible presents to us…names like Love, Logos, and Yah…Weh. Names are important, so search for ones that provide a sense of welcome, recognition and acceptance. Our invitation to live in relationship with the entire universe as the body of God came to us in the form of a tiny baby that they named Jesus, our deliverance, our salvation. Let’s lean in. So be it. Amen.
*http://torahview.com/questions/the-importance-of-the-eighth-day-for-circumcision/
**https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/yeshua-deliverer-savior.html
***https://www.britannica.com/topic/logos
Pastoral Prayer
God of Love, Logos, reason for our being, all we have and all we are come from You. We are grateful, especially when all is well. Help us, Lord, to hold fast to our gratitude even in times of hardship, when we are hurting, when we are melancholy, when circumstances within and without are pushing us to our limits. May our hope in You be a rock to stand on; may the view from there give us the clarity we need; may Your Holy Light be our focus and our guide. May we be surprised at finding you in unexpected places, everywhere. May our love for You and for each other sustain us, like a prayer, through all of life’s demands. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Benediction
I leave you with this ancient blessing, from the book of Numbers:
“The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord let his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace.”