The Gospel calls Jesus "Emmanuel" - which means "God with us". This feast of Christmas reminds us of our dignity - that before the first star was formed, from all eternity, God had it in His mind to make us in His image and likeness and then to become one of us so that we might share in His glory! Stand tall, and know that you matter, remember your dignity as a beloved son or daughter of God.
We've just read out a long list of names, some of them almost unpronounceable to us moderns! I've heard Zerubbabel pronounced three different ways already tonight. As someone with a difficult to pronounce name for anyone who isn't German, I sympathise!
Have you ever looked up the meaning of your name? Most names, especially if they come from older languages, have a hidden meaning;
Katharine for example, comes from Greek, Katharos, which means pure.
John comes from Hebrew, Yohanan, which means Graced by God.
Lucy comes from Latin, Lucius, meaning Light or Light Bringer.
Frederick comes from German, and means Peaceful ruler.
It’s well worth looking up your own name, to find out what hidden meaning your parents may or may not have intended to give you, what hidden purpose they accorded you.
When I looked up the meaning of my own names, Edward Gerhard Hauschild, I was fascinated at the accidental theme that emerged;
Edward is Anglo-Saxon, it means Guardian of wealth, or prosperous guardian.
Gerhard is also a Germanic name, it means brave with the spear,
and Hauschild, my surname, is an ancient German nickname for a ferocious warrior, which could literally be translated as shield hacker.
Perhaps in naming me my mother and father intended that I should be a Guardian of wealth, who is brave with the spear, and ferociously hacks at the shields of his enemies? If so I suppose they are quite disappointed!
Most people now don’t take care to check the meaning of a name before they choose it for their children – family names, or simply sounding novel and interesting are more important to them now. In fact, I was named for my mother’s grandfather and my paternal grandfather, most likely without any care for what the names actually meant.
This isn’t the case for the names listed by St Matthew in Jesus’ family tree, in that Gospel we just read. Their names are mostly Hebrew names, which means that when they were named their families would have been acutely aware that their name meant something, or communicated some value of importance. Some of them were even given new names by God Himself. The first three names on the list, the Patriarchs of the Jewish people, all have important meanings;
Abram, was re-named Abraham, which meant father of many nations.
Isaac means one who laughs or rejoices, on account of his mother’s laughter at God’s promise and his parent’s joy in his birth in their old age.
Jacob, was re-named Israel, a name rich with meaning which could be translated as he struggles with God, or as God struggles, or as God rules.
For ancient Jews, names carried a deep and powerful significance. It is worth, therefore, looking at the two names given to the Son of Mary; Jesus, the name he was to be given, and Emmanuel, the name he will be called.
Jesus, Yeshua, means God saves; the angel Gabriel says “you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.”
How does God save? He doesn’t do it simply by waving a hand and deciding to free us from Sin. He chose something more shocking and dramatic: He chose to save us by His presence, which is why the Gospel says the words of the prophet Isaiah are fulfilled; they will call Him Emmanuel, a name which means God is with us. We've come to Church on this dark winter’s night to kneel before the child laid in a manger at Bethlehem because this child is God with us: the God of the whole universe, stepping down from the great heights of heaven and the insurmountable difference between us and Him, and taking on the form of a human child.
The Church uses all kinds of different imagery to explain what we are doing tonight, most commonly the image of a marriage. The prophet Isaiah, in our first reading, says;
Like a young man marrying a virgin, so will the one who built you wed you, and as the bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so will your God rejoice in you.
The incarnation of God as Jesus Christ marries the divine nature of God to our human nature, as an act of great love, because He wants us to be united to Him. He compares it to a marriage to communicate how great His love is for us, and how badly He desires us to be united with Him.
The Church also signifies this great mystery sacramentally as well. When we begin to celebrate the eucharist, when the deacon prepares the chalice, the cup of wine which will become the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, he will mix a single drop of water into the cup and say this prayer;
By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.
In Christ, our human nature is drawn into God’s divine life like a drop of water in a cup of wine. The water is still water, the wine is still wine, and yet they are one, perfectly united in the Communion chalice just as God and man come together in the one person Jesus Christ who offers himself to us so that (like that little drop of water in the chalice) we can be one with Him, made into something more glorious than we could ever have imagined.
What is our response in the face of so great a mystery, that God could become one of us? Reverence, and joy.
In a moment, we will recite the Creed, and we will perform an ancient gesture; when we recall God descending from heaven, we will all kneel down, in a moment of silence, before on our knees we recite our belief in God’s incarnation; by the power of the Holy Spirit he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. Having knelt to acknowledge the mystery, in reverence and awe at what God has done for us, we will then stand up.
We stand up, we stand tall, because God has become one of us, because we have value and dignity as members of Christ’s body and sharers in His divine life. When so much in the world around us tries to make us feel small, and insignificant, and hopeless, this feast of Christmas takes us by the hand and lifts us up from the ground and says; have hope, rejoice, trust in the name of Jesus, which means God saves, boldly proclaim Him as Emmanuel, God with us, remember your dignity, remember you are a son or daughter of God in Jesus Christ.
This feast is the answer to a world that sees us as unimportant, that sees in us nothing more than an insignificant collection of cells flying around in an insignificant corner of a cold dark uncaring space. This feast is a re-assertion of our faith, that the God who made the universe made us in His image and likeness, and desired from all eternity, to become one of us so that we could share in His glory.
Sing glad carols, bring the news of great Joy to the world; today a saviour is born to us, his name is Jesus, which means God saves, and he is called God-with-us.
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