January 06, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
Well…what’s it like when someone calls you by someone else’s name? What happens when someone knows you by the wrong name?
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Preached at Trinity Buffalo
January 1, 2012
Text: Luke 2:15-21
I just want to say
that I have spent the week
since last Sunday
in sweat pants and hoodies
and suddenly,
this morning,
I find myself in a dress.
It is no way to start the New Year.
But we have begun,
so let me wish you a happy
and blessed 2012.
Now…what’s in a name?
Jesus bar Joseph
was the name
of the historical figure
gleaming at the core of our religion
like the sun at the center of our solar system.
Jesus is Latin for the Greek, Iesous (pronounced “Yay-soos”).
The name “Jesus” stuck instead of Iesous
because Christianity
became the religion of Rome
and Latin was the language of the empire.
But the Greek, Iesous,
was not his name.
Jesus had a Hebrew name,
not a Greek or Latin name.
That name was Joshua,
but since there was no “J” sound
in ancient Hebrew,
it was Yeshua (or Y’shua).
Like all names,
and especially all ancient names,
Yeshua had a meaning.
It meant, “God saves” or more exactly,
“Jehovah is salvation.”
A name
was far more significant
in that time and culture
than in our own –
in ours, a social security
has more meaning than most of our names.
My name, Cameron, in Gaelic,
means, “Bent Nose.”
It does hold some meaning for me however,
in that one of my daughters,
one of my sisters
and one of my nieces
share my name.
And so it is a name laden with family.
In such ways
a name takes on meaning.
It is impossible to know
what Yeshua
meant to Jesus.
A lot of people in his generation
had that name.
A lot of people,
before and with him,
were named, “God saves”.
A lot of people
before, with and after him,
believed that God saves.
So we do not know
what his name meant to him,
but we do know
that the meaning of his name
came to define
how people would remember him.
Now,
because we are a highly secular culture,
there are a lot of people who think
that Jesus’ last name was, “Christ.”
But Jesus did not have a last name,
any more than millions of people
in Semitic cultures around the world today
have last names.
Yeshua bar Joseph, was his name.
Or more accurately, Yeshua bar Yosef;
that is, Yeshua “son of” Yosef.
But Yeshua,
a long while after his death,
began to receive a title alongside his actual name –
Yeshua Messias,
or Hebrew for, Messiah.
Of course the title, Messias,
got changed like the name Yeshua did.
It became the Greek form,
Christos or Christ.
Messias means, in Hebrew,
literally,
“anointed one”.
It did not mean what we mean by it.
When we say Yeshua Messias,
or Jesus Christ,
we mean them as synonymous.
To say Jesus
is to say Christ in our world,
and to say Christ is to mean Jesus.
That is because the Roman Empire
spread, converted and coerced that version
of Christianity across the globe
until you and I,
and most of the modern world,
took it for granted
that Jesus means Christ
and vis versa.
Even those who do not believe
Jesus means Christ
know that those two words
are synonymous for Christians.
Those words,
Jesus and Christ,
carry heavy baggage, as we say.
But it is always refreshing
to go back,
way back,
before the words
carried the baggage we know today.
Way, way back
when the words,
Yeshua and Messias,
were just a name
and just a title
that more than one person
bore
at more than one time.
You see, all the kings of Israel were
“anointed” – Messias.
There is an old story
that used to circulate around my seminary
about a particular well-known student
at the Harvard Divinity School,
who was preparing for an Old Testament exam.
It was common knowledge
that his long-tenured professor
had but one question on the course Final:
“Name all the Kings of Israel.”
That is quite a feat of memory by the way,
something like 43 over a 433 year period.
So the student arrived for his final exam
having memorized all 43 kings of Israel and Judah
and was horrified when he read the actual exam question:
“Name all the major and minor Prophets of Israel.”
According to the story,
after concluding his inability to answer the question,
he provided this answer:
“Who am I to judge between
who is a major and who is a minor prophet?
But as for the kings of Israel…”
Point being,
all those kings
and all those prophets
were Messias,
“Anointed ones.”
As I am fond of telling our children
at baptisms,
Messiah means “Oily Head.”
All those ancient kings and prophets
were anointed with oil
as the symbol of sacred selection –
or divine favor.
In fact,
Queen Elizabeth,
some sixty years ago,
was anointed with oil
in a private ceremony
by none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury,
because the British monarch
is believed to have divine favor.
I know,
it sounds absolutely primitive in our world,
but there it is –
a very long tradition
of anointing royalty and prophets with oil.
So Yeshua Messias
means, literally,
“Jehovah saves, anointed one.”
Why should we care about any of these
peculiar and arcane ideas?
Why not just go on with the old familiar names,
without knowing any of this messy,
possibly confusing,
and somewhat troubling
dissertation on names?
Well…what’s it like
when someone calls you
by someone else’s name?
What happens
when someone knows you
by the wrong name?
Right.
There are two persons we are talking about
when we say Jesus
and Christ;
two different historical figures;
one is a clear theological construction
and the other an historical figure
obscured by the dust of time;
and we should understand the difference.
Marcus Borg likes to distinguish them
as the Jesus of History
and the Christ of Faith,
or the Pre-Resurrection
and Post-Resurrection
Jesus.
But however we want to talk about them,
to name them
and understand the difference
is important to our relationship
with either or both.
Yeshua bar Yosef
is the man who was born, named, and
formed the sacred spiritual wisdom
that has been filtered
through the Gospels.
Jesus Christ
is the god formed from the faith,
doctrines and politics
of the historic Church,
and who evolved centuries
after Yeshua bar Yosef
was dead and buried.
One offers us wisdom about God
and about God’s best dream for us;
and the other is God,
and the object of faith.
It is possible to be a Christian
and acknowledge
the difference
and believe in both;
and it is also possible to be a Christian
and believe in one
but not the other.
I happen to believe
it is important
for the sake of
intellectual honesty
and spiritual integrity,
to acknowledge the difference
between Yeshua and Jesus,
and not pretend
that they are the same:
Yeshua and Jesus,
Messias and Christ.
Let me give a specific example.
Yeshua, the historical man,
took a saying made famous by Rabbi Hillel,
and turned it into his core value:
Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.
And then he connected it
to a teaching on non-violence:
If someone strikes you on one cheek,
offer him the other.
This teaching was not preached
by the Christ
that the Church emphasized
when it went on Crusades
to enforce belief at the end of a sword;
or later,
to replace culture
by force of empire.
On the other hand, Jesus Christ,
the subject of Church doctrine
was defined as without sin,
and died to save us from our sins.
Even though the historical man, Yeshua,
never actually talked about himself
the way the Church
described Jesus Christ,
the two became woven together
into one monolithic tapestry.
I am not advocating for one or the other,
or for one over the other;
and in truth,
anyone who cares about Jesus
can’t help but blend the two together.
But whichever one you believe in,
or even if you are a full-blown advocate of both,
I am pleading
for us to acknowledge
and make the distinction
between the man of history
and the Christ of faith.
The reason is,
that once we embark upon this path of distinction,
the man of history
or the Christ of faith,
becomes more powerful
and transformative.
That’s right,
either or both
become more powerful
as we come to understand the difference.
And frankly,
Christianity as a vibrant spiritual practice
is a boat without a sail
if we try to ignore the tension and challenge
of Yeshua verse Jesus
at our very core.
And so,
on this Sunday after Christmas,
an occasion we call “Holy Name,”
because of the Gospel story
in which the baby receives his name, Yeshua,
I invite us to consider:
What is in a name?
I invite us to come to terms
with what we mean
by the name, Jesus.
I invite us to bring into focus,
how that Jesus
brings meaning to our own names.
I invite us to consider,
standing here at the gate of the New Year,
how Jesus,
the man of history
or the Christ of faith,
or both,
are embedded
in the name we carry?
How does your name
or my name
invoke the meaning
of his name?
Welcome to 2012.
