Cherish the name
Commentary
(Note: This commentary was originally published in 1996.)
If people do stir for worship today, by the time they come to church they may have done two things already: messed up or forgotten some New Year's Resolution or other -- you don't have to waste sermon time reminding them -- or forgotten, more importantly, the name of Jesus and the role Jesus plays in their life.
Upon awakening to greet the Monday that is New Year's Day, each does well to think first of Jesus' name and then to commend the day to him. Those who do will have shifted their focus from the self that cannot carry all the burdens, to the one who can and does.
New Year's Day always falls on the eighth day, as ancient Jews figured it. So there is a kind of ambivalence in many churches as to how to observe it. Not this year; it's buried on a weekday, and only a minority celebrates. But in the years when it does fall on a Sunday and does get observed by those who did not overdo the partying, those who knew how to number their days and thus how to use their ears, it is valuable to connect the observances.
Someone has said that intercessory prayer is the great act of worship, because in it you consign everything small and great to God. The invocation of the name of Jesus, at the beginning of worship today or the beginning of every day as one rises, is an act that helps us to do the consigning of ourselves. The event occurs as a kind of "package deal," with few loose ends. God, and others, are to look at us henceforth in new ways, even as we stare today at a New Year.
Grist For The Mill
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
Thirty years ago a countercultural book was called Been Down So Long It Looks Up From Here. One wonders whether the committee that picks Lectionary texts wants to start at the bottom and catch us, New Year's morning, starting so low that the rest of the year can only look "up from here." I recall a character invented by Don Marquis years ago: "The Old Soak," who was married to a prohibitionist wife. He always tried to convince her that at least some writers in the Old Testament were not prohibitionists. Clearly, the writer of Ecclesiastes must have been a conservative who liked "corn likker," not New Testament drinks like cocktails. Only someone who had had a hangover or otherwise experienced satiety could be on the same wavelength as "Exclusiastics," as the Old Soak called him.
I may sound frivolous starting the Common Lectionary comments with reference to hippie- and old soak-minded texts, but one is invited to do so by the committee that chose this one. What do we do with it (if, that is, we have church today and thus an occasion to preach, and any Blue Monday folk do show up)?
We treat this as part of the whole plot of believers' existence. The futility of the work, of the passing generations, of the change of seasons, all have to reach the consciousness of all people some of the time. Confess: it'll be good to move on, after this dose of realism.
Numbers 6:22-27
This one is for Lutherans only, who have to be beloved by all who are doing what I do: anticipating New Year's and Naming of Jesus day and writing about its texts on a summer morning. The Common Lectionary folk have an impossible "vanity of vanity" text while Lutherans, losers some days when there is divergence in text choice, today walk off with nothing less than the Aaronic benediction, as it has come to be called.
Anthropomorphism abounds and metaphoric language leaps. Why not use the day, if you preach on this text, to make a point (for one minute and 23 seconds) on the inevitability of anthropomorphic thinking or metaphoric speaking about God? How else say anything about a "Person" unless there be features we associate with persons, seen or unseen, visible or invisible?
So today the Lord has a face, a countenance. It is a shiny one, a lift-upable one, a peace granting one. So after the brief background, here comes not more scholarship but more proclamation and realization of the presence of God. At partings we need a sense of this presence and the continued blessing. Words end; the organ sound turns quiet; the guitars are back in their cases; the door is locked. But no one leaves the gathering for worship without having experienced afresh the benign countenance of God who imparts peace with the blessing, which here is a gift that belongs to the nature of God.
Revelation 21:1-6a
Do you ever complain about lectionary reading choices? I found myself grumbling about the first reading for today: vanity of vanities and all that. Now I take back the grumbles: Revelation 21:1-6 is a fine way for the people to whom we preach to start the new calendar year. If Ecclesiastes is hope-less, lacking vision or energy, here everything looks forward. It is not necessary on this kind of day to spend a great deal of time discussing the genre of the book of Revelation; save that for adult classes as the year 2000 approaches and apocalypticism will be an "in" subject.
It makes more sense today to plunge in and talk about the usefulness of a vision that looks useless. In the moments between wakefulness and sleep, or when we are in delirium, or ecstasy, the kind of language of Revelation 21 makes sense. It seems to have little to do with the workaday world, of Mondays like next week's, and all the days to follow. And yet it does: the grand theme is clear. God, who is always pictured as dwelling apart, away, aloft, above, invisible, chooses to dwell, to "tent" with the people.
In the midst of a world in which death is close -- there's a lot of it going around these days! -- and tears come easily, the not-easy-to-grasp promise of a tear-less existence serves to stimulate imaginations: there are other ways to live, with God present in Christ, than in the way of vanity, purposelessness, and the shadow of death.
Philippians 2:9-13
We still gasp at names. Come across a familiar face and find out that it belongs to a celebrity? Then you find that the name matches the face and you gasp. (Or, at least, some people do). In other cases, firms do extravagant things to protect their names. You cannot copy or use their logo with the name on it. You can easily be sued if you misuse it. If you are an employee you are supposed to live up to it. If all that is true in the modern world, where a name can mean any old thing, we think of what it meant in the Hebrew and Greek worlds where names were supposed to condense the elements of a person, her life, her vocation, and the attitude of her namers.
Now, here, we have "the name of Jesus." The name came from an angel, says the Gospel of Luke. Mary and Joseph see to it that the child is thus named. And now: "at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow." This is a passage from an intact little hymn- like passage snuggled into Philippians 2. Years ago a "death of God" theologian quoted Philippians 2:5-8 to say that God was dead. He "proved" that because Paul said that God in Jesus humbled and emptied himself. Challenged by another professor, "How does your theory square with Philippians 2:9-11 on the exalted divine Jesus?" he said, "That only proves there are more ways than one to read a text." Mumbled a sober-minded colleague, "Yes. A right way and a wrong way." The right way is to read it as honoring the humbled one, now exalted, for us.
Matthew 25:31-46
This is one of the most easily messed up preaching situations imaginable. The text seems to preach itself, and only invites the preacher in as kind of a predictable ventriloquist's dummy, who mouths words and apes gestures to match what everyone knows and has heard so often. This year, with 364.5 days ahead, is the chance to find Jesus in the overlookable and abhorrent people, the ones you can neglect. This year, with 364.478 days ahead, a bit of time having elapsed, is the chance to mess up and be seen as the outsider who did not see Jesus in the needy one.
There may be better ways to look at this. Thus: this text does not command you to be generous, does not explain why some were selfish. It comes with sanction in the context of Jesus' words. So think of it as an authorization and a promise. You don't have to find Christ in the neighbor in need. You get to find Christ there.
If Jesus were only off in the sky, or in the history books, life would be pale and unchallenging; the need for grace would seem remote, and so would grace be. But with Jesus present in the one in need of food, clothing, and liquid to quench thirst, opportunities for having an enlargement of the scope and sphere of Christ come more than three mealtimes a day. Even the language of "eternal life" gets connected with this reality of finding Jesus almost everywhere we turn. Only when need disappears from earth will Jesus disappear.
Luke 2:21
On the name day of Jesus, sooner or later we should get the business at hand finished. We have heard of instances in which a minister got so busy with candles and oil and water, with the proper formula of words for baptizing and so much concern for where the parents stand, why the baby cries, and whether the godparents are catching on, that he or she neglected some of the most important things. The water, yes, but also the name.
Names meant more back when Jesus was named, but even now we pack much into a name. In the nineteenth century, Methodist evangelist Peter Cartwright was to baptize a child of a couple on the North-South line. "What is its name?" "Jefferson Davis Jones," he hears. But Cartwright says: "I baptize thee ... George Washington Jones." The Union-minded preacher cringed; he could not bring himself to say the hated words. The parents were left to cope with the name change. I do not know outcomes; there's no magical, mystical, legal tie to the way it gets said at an event. But that little story reminds us how jarring a name can be. Find a good person with the name of someone who did evil to you, and you will cringe.
Find one with the good name of someone who "saves his people from their sins," and you will cherish the name. As a billon people do today who would have no other reason than that for loving the name or observing the naming day -- as they choose to do this day.
Fortunately for some in the liturgical churches -- well, for anyone in any churches -- mass or other forms of worship are often observed on the eve of the Lord's Day, the old-time Sabbath, Saturday toward sundown. Fortunately this year, at least, because those who are doing the observing stand a better chance than others to celebrate the twelfth day of Christmas, epiphany, corporately.
Others of us will cheat and use bulletin folders intended by publishers for January 6th's Saturday on January 7, Sunday -- thus crowding off our calendars some other meaty texts. Somehow, somehow, we have to find ways to "do" epiphany. Without it?
Without epiphany and what the annual observance and readings symbolize, Israel would have remained a tiny, lightless, unattractive, sectarian nation and not "a light to the nations." Without these, the Jesus movement would have been sectarian reformist Judaism, confined to people of one ethnic or racial or traditional lineage, who would have kept to themselves the story of what their God was doing in Jesus.
With epiphany? With epiphany Israel and its story take on a universal attraction -- capable of being denied or eliciting indifference, of course, too -- and Christmas and its story are intended to throw light on all peoples and situations. With epiphany we learn we have to get out of the way, so that our shadows do not prevent others from seeing the light; get out of the way, so that the light can fall on all on whom it was and is intended.
If people do stir for worship today, by the time they come to church they may have done two things already: messed up or forgotten some New Year's Resolution or other -- you don't have to waste sermon time reminding them -- or forgotten, more importantly, the name of Jesus and the role Jesus plays in their life.
Upon awakening to greet the Monday that is New Year's Day, each does well to think first of Jesus' name and then to commend the day to him. Those who do will have shifted their focus from the self that cannot carry all the burdens, to the one who can and does.
New Year's Day always falls on the eighth day, as ancient Jews figured it. So there is a kind of ambivalence in many churches as to how to observe it. Not this year; it's buried on a weekday, and only a minority celebrates. But in the years when it does fall on a Sunday and does get observed by those who did not overdo the partying, those who knew how to number their days and thus how to use their ears, it is valuable to connect the observances.
Someone has said that intercessory prayer is the great act of worship, because in it you consign everything small and great to God. The invocation of the name of Jesus, at the beginning of worship today or the beginning of every day as one rises, is an act that helps us to do the consigning of ourselves. The event occurs as a kind of "package deal," with few loose ends. God, and others, are to look at us henceforth in new ways, even as we stare today at a New Year.
Grist For The Mill
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
Thirty years ago a countercultural book was called Been Down So Long It Looks Up From Here. One wonders whether the committee that picks Lectionary texts wants to start at the bottom and catch us, New Year's morning, starting so low that the rest of the year can only look "up from here." I recall a character invented by Don Marquis years ago: "The Old Soak," who was married to a prohibitionist wife. He always tried to convince her that at least some writers in the Old Testament were not prohibitionists. Clearly, the writer of Ecclesiastes must have been a conservative who liked "corn likker," not New Testament drinks like cocktails. Only someone who had had a hangover or otherwise experienced satiety could be on the same wavelength as "Exclusiastics," as the Old Soak called him.
I may sound frivolous starting the Common Lectionary comments with reference to hippie- and old soak-minded texts, but one is invited to do so by the committee that chose this one. What do we do with it (if, that is, we have church today and thus an occasion to preach, and any Blue Monday folk do show up)?
We treat this as part of the whole plot of believers' existence. The futility of the work, of the passing generations, of the change of seasons, all have to reach the consciousness of all people some of the time. Confess: it'll be good to move on, after this dose of realism.
Numbers 6:22-27
This one is for Lutherans only, who have to be beloved by all who are doing what I do: anticipating New Year's and Naming of Jesus day and writing about its texts on a summer morning. The Common Lectionary folk have an impossible "vanity of vanity" text while Lutherans, losers some days when there is divergence in text choice, today walk off with nothing less than the Aaronic benediction, as it has come to be called.
Anthropomorphism abounds and metaphoric language leaps. Why not use the day, if you preach on this text, to make a point (for one minute and 23 seconds) on the inevitability of anthropomorphic thinking or metaphoric speaking about God? How else say anything about a "Person" unless there be features we associate with persons, seen or unseen, visible or invisible?
So today the Lord has a face, a countenance. It is a shiny one, a lift-upable one, a peace granting one. So after the brief background, here comes not more scholarship but more proclamation and realization of the presence of God. At partings we need a sense of this presence and the continued blessing. Words end; the organ sound turns quiet; the guitars are back in their cases; the door is locked. But no one leaves the gathering for worship without having experienced afresh the benign countenance of God who imparts peace with the blessing, which here is a gift that belongs to the nature of God.
Revelation 21:1-6a
Do you ever complain about lectionary reading choices? I found myself grumbling about the first reading for today: vanity of vanities and all that. Now I take back the grumbles: Revelation 21:1-6 is a fine way for the people to whom we preach to start the new calendar year. If Ecclesiastes is hope-less, lacking vision or energy, here everything looks forward. It is not necessary on this kind of day to spend a great deal of time discussing the genre of the book of Revelation; save that for adult classes as the year 2000 approaches and apocalypticism will be an "in" subject.
It makes more sense today to plunge in and talk about the usefulness of a vision that looks useless. In the moments between wakefulness and sleep, or when we are in delirium, or ecstasy, the kind of language of Revelation 21 makes sense. It seems to have little to do with the workaday world, of Mondays like next week's, and all the days to follow. And yet it does: the grand theme is clear. God, who is always pictured as dwelling apart, away, aloft, above, invisible, chooses to dwell, to "tent" with the people.
In the midst of a world in which death is close -- there's a lot of it going around these days! -- and tears come easily, the not-easy-to-grasp promise of a tear-less existence serves to stimulate imaginations: there are other ways to live, with God present in Christ, than in the way of vanity, purposelessness, and the shadow of death.
Philippians 2:9-13
We still gasp at names. Come across a familiar face and find out that it belongs to a celebrity? Then you find that the name matches the face and you gasp. (Or, at least, some people do). In other cases, firms do extravagant things to protect their names. You cannot copy or use their logo with the name on it. You can easily be sued if you misuse it. If you are an employee you are supposed to live up to it. If all that is true in the modern world, where a name can mean any old thing, we think of what it meant in the Hebrew and Greek worlds where names were supposed to condense the elements of a person, her life, her vocation, and the attitude of her namers.
Now, here, we have "the name of Jesus." The name came from an angel, says the Gospel of Luke. Mary and Joseph see to it that the child is thus named. And now: "at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow." This is a passage from an intact little hymn- like passage snuggled into Philippians 2. Years ago a "death of God" theologian quoted Philippians 2:5-8 to say that God was dead. He "proved" that because Paul said that God in Jesus humbled and emptied himself. Challenged by another professor, "How does your theory square with Philippians 2:9-11 on the exalted divine Jesus?" he said, "That only proves there are more ways than one to read a text." Mumbled a sober-minded colleague, "Yes. A right way and a wrong way." The right way is to read it as honoring the humbled one, now exalted, for us.
Matthew 25:31-46
This is one of the most easily messed up preaching situations imaginable. The text seems to preach itself, and only invites the preacher in as kind of a predictable ventriloquist's dummy, who mouths words and apes gestures to match what everyone knows and has heard so often. This year, with 364.5 days ahead, is the chance to find Jesus in the overlookable and abhorrent people, the ones you can neglect. This year, with 364.478 days ahead, a bit of time having elapsed, is the chance to mess up and be seen as the outsider who did not see Jesus in the needy one.
There may be better ways to look at this. Thus: this text does not command you to be generous, does not explain why some were selfish. It comes with sanction in the context of Jesus' words. So think of it as an authorization and a promise. You don't have to find Christ in the neighbor in need. You get to find Christ there.
If Jesus were only off in the sky, or in the history books, life would be pale and unchallenging; the need for grace would seem remote, and so would grace be. But with Jesus present in the one in need of food, clothing, and liquid to quench thirst, opportunities for having an enlargement of the scope and sphere of Christ come more than three mealtimes a day. Even the language of "eternal life" gets connected with this reality of finding Jesus almost everywhere we turn. Only when need disappears from earth will Jesus disappear.
Luke 2:21
On the name day of Jesus, sooner or later we should get the business at hand finished. We have heard of instances in which a minister got so busy with candles and oil and water, with the proper formula of words for baptizing and so much concern for where the parents stand, why the baby cries, and whether the godparents are catching on, that he or she neglected some of the most important things. The water, yes, but also the name.
Names meant more back when Jesus was named, but even now we pack much into a name. In the nineteenth century, Methodist evangelist Peter Cartwright was to baptize a child of a couple on the North-South line. "What is its name?" "Jefferson Davis Jones," he hears. But Cartwright says: "I baptize thee ... George Washington Jones." The Union-minded preacher cringed; he could not bring himself to say the hated words. The parents were left to cope with the name change. I do not know outcomes; there's no magical, mystical, legal tie to the way it gets said at an event. But that little story reminds us how jarring a name can be. Find a good person with the name of someone who did evil to you, and you will cringe.
Find one with the good name of someone who "saves his people from their sins," and you will cherish the name. As a billon people do today who would have no other reason than that for loving the name or observing the naming day -- as they choose to do this day.
Fortunately for some in the liturgical churches -- well, for anyone in any churches -- mass or other forms of worship are often observed on the eve of the Lord's Day, the old-time Sabbath, Saturday toward sundown. Fortunately this year, at least, because those who are doing the observing stand a better chance than others to celebrate the twelfth day of Christmas, epiphany, corporately.
Others of us will cheat and use bulletin folders intended by publishers for January 6th's Saturday on January 7, Sunday -- thus crowding off our calendars some other meaty texts. Somehow, somehow, we have to find ways to "do" epiphany. Without it?
Without epiphany and what the annual observance and readings symbolize, Israel would have remained a tiny, lightless, unattractive, sectarian nation and not "a light to the nations." Without these, the Jesus movement would have been sectarian reformist Judaism, confined to people of one ethnic or racial or traditional lineage, who would have kept to themselves the story of what their God was doing in Jesus.
With epiphany? With epiphany Israel and its story take on a universal attraction -- capable of being denied or eliciting indifference, of course, too -- and Christmas and its story are intended to throw light on all peoples and situations. With epiphany we learn we have to get out of the way, so that our shadows do not prevent others from seeing the light; get out of the way, so that the light can fall on all on whom it was and is intended.
