Sunday 1st January 2006The Most Holy Name of Jesus

Fr David Cherry

Numbers 6: 22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21

“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
+ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

One of the things that tells me a name is a very important thing, revealing something about yourself, is when I ring up a department in the university and say: hello, it’s David Cherry in the Chaplaincy.  And the other person says: hello.  I want to know who I am talking to – who is this person?

At the heart of our faith is a Person, who is named; who has made himself known: Jesus.

The de-personalisation of society is rampant.  What bliss it is when someone actually wants you to know their name on the telephone.  But it has become a marketing ploy.  Hi, is that Mr Cherry? Can I call you David? Well hello David it’s Nick from…  Yea….?  I find myself replying with suspicion.  We’ve become distrustful of things too personal.   

De-personalising someone is an act of violence against a person.  In order to perform a massacre or genocide it is necessary to dehumanise the victims, to ‘de-name’ them and re-name them:  Jew, refugee, immigrant; terrorist – and the panoply of euphemisms that are used to disguise persons, such as ‘co-lateral damage’.

We are de-personalised too: ‘consumers’.  And religion and spirituality is following the same trends.  There is a whole industry of spirituality.  Check out the supermarket of spirituality at a book store: Mind, Body, Spirit, the Esoteric, books by the wonderful Dalai Lama (don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge fan too!) … and the religion section is miniscule by comparison and usually archeological, the study of some quaint ‘has-been’ faith.  Self-help books are what they are: about the self and we can all do with any help we can get.  But they are not the whole story.  

At the heart of our faith is a Person, who is named; who has made himself known: Jesus.

The widespread appeal of a depersonalised, discarnate religion, I want to provocatively submit, is that they are about the individual, rather than Persons in Relationship or Communion.  Persons in Relationship require hard work, commitment, endurance, hope – the qualities of a Gen Sec of the UN or an Archbishop of Canterbury in a factious Anglican Communion.  And these qualities are in short supply as we feel human polity overtaken by the impersonal forces of economics.  Religion – relationship – has lost its appeal and ironically it is precisely this and only this which can mend us.

I was only able to watch the beginning of a German film, ‘Wings of Desire’ (sometime I might be able to watch it all the way through, but probably my taste is too trashy for such high slow-moving art.)  In the first half-hour or so angels, who look like ordinary humans are hanging about, invisible to humans, in public places like libraries, looking over the shoulders of readers, reading their thoughts, listening to their internal conversations on the train, the agonies, hopes and fears; then these angels are found musing enviously among themselves in a car about what it might be like to be human.  Angels want to be like us.  Imagine what it must be like to be able to sit at a table and kick your sandals off one by one; imagine how it must be to be able to tell a lie, a real stinker; imagine what it must be like to actually touch someone; what must it be like to feel what they feel; what might it be like to be visible and noticed, to hear your name called?

Could the envy of angels be telling us something of the glory of what it is to be human?  To be human is a good thing, not something to be sloughed off in disgust – like a snake shedding its skin.  Our quirks and who we have become is infinitely loved and lovable.  The wry wicked humour; the tantalising delight which is unique to us; the strange bonds of unlikely friendship we find we are capable of; the capacity to find your heart melting at a phrase of Mozart or choked by a poetic phrase; the susceptibility we momentarily find in ourselves where God gets through like light in a crack; where enthusiasm overtakes cynicism.

And could this be what was in the heart of God at the dawn of Creation – to become one with us in our humanity, to appear among us and be known by name, to walk as he did in the garden of Eden bringing creation to fullness, healing, restoring us to our true selves in a personal encounter with us….?

God’s real desire is to be known by humanity, Person to person, to be recognised, to be visible to his Creation for who he is.  And this is made possible in becoming a human person and being called by name: Jesus.

The scandal – the stumbling block - to belief these days is largely due to the fact that it is not about what we do: not about trying to believe the impossible, not about self-improvement, but about believing in the most natural.  The scandal of Christianity is that God is made known in human flesh, in history, wrapped in the swaddling clothes of his particular culture, at a particular time, but as a definite Person with a name.  

And this simple truth is what the shepherds discover at the manger  - this is the revelation for in the manger is no esoteric system or conspiracy theory; no secret knowledge; no theological sophistication, no Code (da Vinci or otherwise) or key to a solution; nothing to be achieved or worked towards, but only accepted like a child.

And because the Crib is so cute and sentimental we think it is only for children – and dangerously we might think that it is not for you and me.  Here is a truth to ponder with Mary in your heart.

Of her flesh he took flesh… writes Gerard Manley Hopkins
He does take fresh and fresh
Though much the mystery how
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O Marvellous!
New Nazareths in us
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve
New Bethlems,
And he born there, evening, noon, and more-
Bethlem or Nazareth
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done
Both God’s and Mary’s Son
The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we breathe

This discovery of our true value is what the Eastern Church calls theosis or divinisation – becoming more who we are, becoming our true selves, becoming who we are in God’s eyes - ‘New self and nobler me’, the glory of his creation, those designed for his company, counted equal, worthy to stand in his presence and whom he calls Heirs, no longer servants, who cry in recognition of God: ‘Abba, Father’.  

God has made himself known in Jesus to draw us into God – “not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh : but by taking of the manhood into God” – if you remember your Athanasian Creed.   Theosis is to bring us to our true sense of personal self, away from delusion, the vague discarnate offers of pseudo-spirituality and a dehumanising culture in its search for meaning or simply power - to be Persons with whom God is in Communion.
    
Here we come on this Octave Day of Christ Mass, to be brought into that richness of Communion which is God’s desire for you and for me, praying that as he has given himself to be known in his vulnerability and frailty by the Name of Jesus, so by His Spirit we may come to know him, yet more deeply, our God of Love, Father Son and Holy Spirit to whom be ascribed all glory, majesty, dominion and might this feast day and evermore.  Amen