Numbers 6:22-27
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:16-21
Who can tell me what the following names have in common? Tom Sayers, Father Willis, William Daniell, Joe Slovo, Dylan Thomas, Humphrey Jennings.
They are all commemorated on Blue Plaques in Camden, the plaques which are displayed on certain buildings to record the fact that some notable person was born, or lived, or died there. Now in fact as we walk round Camden we pass many old houses in which, over the years, very many people have been born, or lived, or died. But most of them don’t have Blue Plaques, because most of them aren’t widely known. To get a Blue Plaque, the story of your life has to have some significance in the public memory. The fact that someone was born at a particular place and time is only remembered because of what happened in their lives afterwards.
It’s the same when we read the stories of the birth and infancy of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. These stories are the Blue Plaques of the gospels. They are only there because of what happened afterwards, and we need to remember that when we read them. The baby born in Bethlehem will go on to preach the Kingdom of God, to heal the sick, he will be betrayed and crucified and will be raised from the dead. The meaning of his birth is found in what comes after.
It is important to remember this, because the naming and circumcision of Jesus, which we commemorate today, eight days after Christmas, are in themselves quite ordinary events. All Jewish boys of course were circumcised as a mark of belonging to the people of God’s covenant. And quite a lot of Jewish boys were named “Jesus” or “Yeshua” – Joshua, which becomes Jesus by way of the Greek of the New Testament.
Now the name Jesus, or Yeshua, means “Yahweh saves”. God is a saviour. So the naming of a boy as Jesus expresses the pious hope of Israel that God will save his people. But the naming of this particular child, the Son of Mary, has a greater meaning, because we know from what comes after that this particular child is, himself, the Saviour. This Jesus is not just a pious hope, but is God come to save his people in person.
He is the saviour who will preach the Kingdom of God. He is the saviour, because he will take away the sins of the world. He is the saviour, because he will share our death in order to raise us with him to new and eternal life. He is the Saviour, because he enters the mess of human history and sin and violence, to bring, not condemnation, but forgiveness and the grace to begin again.
As the Queen so splendidly said in her Christmas speech,
God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general (important though they are) – but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.
Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God’s love.
If we have ever paused to examine ourselves, to look into our hearts, we will know that we need to be forgiven. As part of our common humanity we all have the tendency to prefer ourselves to the other, to turn in on ourselves, to turn away from love. Even if we sincerely strive to be good we know that we are continually wounding ourselves and others in the process. And we are sinned against, too, and the wrongs we suffer can so easily lead to bitterness and resentment and the desire for revenge.
Forgiveness undoes all that. Forgiveness breaks the chains of the past and sets us free. Forgiveness is God’s love breaking in to our unloveliness. And it is God’s gift. God in Jesus frees us from sin by both forgiving us and enabling us to forgive.
Jesus is the saviour. He is God with us; God for us; God on our side. He is the expression of God’s love, which is entirely for us and not against us. He is God showing that he actually wants to be with us in all the mess we’ve made.
The Church, meditating on this, realised very early on that, if Jesus is the Saviour, he must be both fully human and fully Divine. He must be human, because only one who is truly human can really be with us, really identify with us, really make that connection which can save us. But he must also be God, because only God the creator has the power to forgive sin, to set us free and give us a new beginning. So the Saviour must be one indivisible person, who is both human and Divine.
And this gave the Church the other title for today’s feast: Mary, the Mother of God. The Council of Ephesus in 431 decreed that Mary was Theotokos – “God-Bearer”, or “Mother of God”. This was as much a statement about Jesus as it was about Mary. Jesus is one indivisible person, both God and man, and Mary is his mother; therefore Mary is Mother of God. That is to say, she is the Mother of the Saviour, the Mother of the one who has come into the world, and who can and will save us.
And that is why we read these Christmas stories from the Gospels. They are full of meaning, and hope, and promise, because the Saviour has been born for us. He is Jesus, “Yahweh who saves”. He is our brother, human like us; and he is our God, God with us, God on our side, God come not to condemn, but to forgive.
How appropriate it is that the Church on this day, the first of a new civil year, calls us to meditate on the name of Jesus, the name of God who saves.
New year is a time for resolutions, for new beginnings. But the new beginning that matters most of all is the one that Jesus offers us: forgiveness of all that is past, newness of life, freedom from sin and death.
If you make no other resolution this year, let it be to believe and trust in Jesus the Saviour. Maybe for the first time, or maybe to renew the belief and trust of a lifetime. It matters not. He is born for me, and for you. He is born to save. He is the risen Lord, with us now. He can, and will, change lives, remake us, transform us into his image, that we might live with his life.
May you know the joy of Jesus, God who saves, in your life, this new year and always.
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