Sermon
preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis, Rochester, on Christmas Eve
(after sunset).
Unto us a child
is born,
but
what shall we call the baby?
We think of the
couple looking lovingly
at
their newborn daughter,
all asleep and
pink in her crib,
tired out by her struggle to come into the
world,
now content with a tummy full of milk
– a beautiful
sight.
Then we wonder
at
what must be going through their minds
when they call
this little scrap of joy,
Maud Hildebrand.
There are some
dreadful baby names out there.
Most, however, are a matter of taste!
Most, however, are a matter of taste!
But what do we
call the baby lying in the manger,
swaddled
tightly,
surrounded by
straw, oxen,
an anxious
Joseph
and an exhausted
Mary?
What is His
name?
[PAUSE]
Should we call
Him Joseph?
The name
“Joseph” means “God shall increase.”
We read in
Isaiah that
“Of
the increase of his government and peace
there shall be
no end,
upon the throne
of David,
and upon his
kingdom,
to order it, and
to establish it
with judgment and with justice
from henceforth even for ever.
The zeal of the
LORD of hosts will perform this.”
But His name is not Joseph.
There may be a
tradition
of
naming the baby after his father,
but Joseph knows
that he
is not the
father of this child.
This Child may
have the lineage of David,
and
have the title of King,
but He has not
come here on Earth to be King.
St Joseph is a
sign that points to this baby,
but Joseph is not the baby’s name.
[PAUSE]
Should we call
Him Mary?
Some good
Catholic families do name their boys after Our Lady.
Mary is the
Greek form of Miriam
which
is Egyptian and not Hebrew in origin.
It means
“beloved”.
What could be
better said of this baby?
But then every
baby should be beloved of someone.
Every little one
deserves to be called Mary
regardless
of sex.
Too many are not
beloved,
and
the little baby in the manger knows that.
It is His
presence
that
will ensure that every single baby who ever was
will have love shown to them
by the greatest
Being in existence.
If not a sparrow
falls without His knowledge,
then
no child of man
will be
forgotten by His love.
The King of
Heaven cares for all His children.
However, Mary,
Our Lady,
only gets her queenship
through this
baby in the manger.
Our Lady is a sign that points to the baby,
but
Mary is not the baby's name.
[PAUSE]
Should we call
Him John?
“John” means
“God gives”
and
God has indeed given this baby to us.
God has also
given us this child’s cousin,
St
John Baptist,
at most 9 months
earlier.
He will seek out
God in the wilderness
and
call people to repentance.
He will give them the baptism of water
for
the remission of their sins;
he will give
them the new start that they need.
However, he
cannot baptise them with the Holy Spirit
and
thus give them regeneration,
the second birth
necessary for every Christian Soul
on its route back
to God.
His little
cousin asleep in the hay
will
do exactly this
and open the pathway
for souls to be saved.
John cannot.
He will call out
for the paths
to
be made straight for this baby;
he will decrease
so that this baby will increase.
St John is a
sign that points to the baby,
but
John is not the baby's name.
[PAUSE]
So what shall we
call this baby?
You will say,
“Jesus!
It has to be
Jesus!
How could it be anything
else?”
Yet Isaiah would
have Him called
Immanuel
–God with us.
Jeremiah would
have him called
Adonai
Tsideknu
– the Lord Our Righteousness.
The average Jew
watching this miracle
would
call the baby
Yeshua Ben Yosef
– Joshua, Son of
Joseph.
Joshua, which is
the same as Jesus,
means
“God saves”.
If we look at
this baby sleeping in the manger,
all
of these names apply.
This baby will
grow up
to
be our righteousness
for only in Him
will we become truly righteous.
This baby is the
Incarnate God,
born
to be with us,
born to
reconcile Man to God.
This baby is the
man
who
will be crucified for us
and thus save us
from Death itself.
[PAUSE]
So here He is.
Son of Mary, Son
of God.
What do you
think is the baby's name?
No comments:
Post a Comment