Alex Swain

Beloved,

Today is the Feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ (see BCP p. 19 for a reminder of the calendar!). Our lectionary readings today remind us of the significance and power held within a name. 

In Exodus, God proclaims the ineffable utterance of His mystical and Holy Name in the tetragrammaton. Moses’ experience of this great Name, suffice it to say, is filled with awe and wonder, as Exodus 34:5-8 reads.

“The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name, ‘The LORD.’ The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ And Moses quickly bowed his head towards the earth, and worshipped.”

The Bible Project has a video on this term, Lord, which I very much commend to you all (here’s the link: https://youtu.be/eLrGM26pmM0). Suffice it to say, the Holy Name of God transcends time and space by it being relational to the English terms “I Am” and “I Will Be.” The Name of God, then, transcends time and space as the one who was, and is, and will be.

We say something similar during Holy Mass each Sunday, declaring that, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Our Lord Jesus, who is God, is come, has come, and will come again. His presence also transcends time and space, bursting the boundaries of our linear progressions and experiences to a pulp!

And so, we celebrate the naming day and circumcision of our God Made Human. This day when Jesus is named, brought, and sanctified. The name of Jesus held holy unlike any other name on Earth or in Heaven. We invoke the holy name of Jesus in our collects, and every time we pray. Through His Holy name, Jesus drives far from us the human and cosmic and metaphysical powers of darkness that so plague and rule this world. Through His Holy name, Jesus, we remind ourselves of our mystical union bound to Him inexplicably and irrevocably.

And, though Advent is over (though is it ever truly over? As Mtr Fleming Rutledge notes, Advent is the perpetual Christian season, living between the once and future coming of Jesus Christ), we live in eternal hope of the final days where the whole world will know the name of God. As St. Paul notes in the second chapter to the Philippians:

9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name
    that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

So let us celebrate in joy in the name of our savior and our God who is Jesus.

Amen, amen.

Alex Swain

Psalm 103; PM Psalm 148
Isa. 62:1-5,10-12; Rev. 19:11-16; Matt. 1:18-25

Holy Name:

Psalm 8;
Exodus 34:1-8; Romans 1:1-7; Luke 2:15-21