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IHS (also IHC), a monogram or symbol for the name Jesus, is a contraction of the Greek word for Jesus, which in Greek is spelled IHΣΟΥΣ in uncial (majuscule) letters and Iησους in minuscule letters and is transliterated into the Latin alphabet as Iēsus, Jēsus, or Jesus. |
Prayer
Dear Morning Star, come to earth and with us dwell, help us greet you in our swiftly changing year, and respond with joy and penitence sincere. You bear upon you, in your birth, our sin and take a human name of Godly precedence most dear. Bearing the Holy Name of Jesus, God of our salvation, step with us into hazard and prosperity, bringing peace with every stride and grace to every broken life.
(Based upon Episcopal Hymnal 250, Jaroslav Vajda, 1919)
written by C. Andrew Doyle
Notes about the day and its lessons.
written by C. Andrew Doyle
Notes about the day and its lessons.
This year, the feast of the Holy Name falls upon a Sunday and takes precedence to our normal cycle of readings. The Gospel falls within a repeat of the readings for Christmas Day and so many of the themes may continue. If you didn't get to preach Christmas eve, maybe you can wind your text backwards and say what you thought should have been said then!
The Gospel Text for this Sunday
The text adds but this one verse to the Christmas Eve lesson and it is to this I believe a preacher might find a goodly amount to say: "After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb."
From the homily of Pope Francis on the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, 2014. It was preached in part celebration of the Jesuit order and its founder Faber:
The heart of Christ is the heart of a God who, out of love, “emptied” himself. Each one of us, as Jesuits, who follow Jesus should be ready to empty himself. We are called to this humility: to be “emptied” beings. To be men who are not centred on themselves because the centre of the Society is Christ and his Church. And God is the Deus semper maior, the God who always surprises us. And if the God of surprises is not at the centre, the Society becomes disorientated. Because of this, to be a Jesuit means to be a person of incomplete thought, of open thought: because he thinks always looking to the horizon which is the ever greater glory of God, who ceaselessly surprises us. And this is the restlessness of our inner abyss. This holy and beautiful restlessness! (Here is the whole text)
God, surprises us with the incarnation. It is this incarnation and the name of Jesus, our salvation, that we celebrate.
This particular feast is a feast of glory. It is the worship of God who empties God's self to become lower than an angel and who brings forth salvation to all humanity. This is a gift of grace waited upon by many a generation, and for whom this generation still longs.
Yet we search for so many other ways to be delivered. So many other lesser gods, fixit plans, we are literally scammed by the multitude of our cultural and contextual offerings. All who desire fealty to their badge and icons.
We worship so many lesser Gods and give them so much of our time and wealth. We are so open to their many misgivings, slights, and public misdemeanors; while, at the same time, recommending them to friends. Meanwhile, we are closed to the possibility of God. We are closed to the imagination and creativity of God. We are closed to wanting to learn more about God and the person named Jesus.
To follow Jesus, is to reverse our ordered life and place it under the headship of Christ. To become curious about the God we follow more than the church we attend. To discover the mighty acts of God, more than the political allegiances of today. To proclaim God's name with lips of praise, to share what we have, and do good works because our minds are restless with the name of Jesus and all that it entails.
Holy Name is not only a feast, it is a challenge for those who awaken a desire to follow the most high God.
Some Thoughts on Galatians 4:4-7
"So insidious is Sin that even the good gifts of God, like the Law (Galatians 3:21) or even the gospel, can be easily misused."
Commentary, Galatians 4:4-7, Erik Heen, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.
"The Spirit that God pours into all our hearts is a Spirit of compassion. It is a Spirit that embraces us and makes us a part of a family defined by God's love. It is that compassion that gives us our meaning and purpose in this life."
Commentary, Galatians 4:4-7, Erik Heen, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.
"The Spirit that God pours into all our hearts is a Spirit of compassion. It is a Spirit that embraces us and makes us a part of a family defined by God's love. It is that compassion that gives us our meaning and purpose in this life."
"Love Came Down," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer.
The theologian Robert Farrar Capon in his book on parables (Kingdom, Grace, Judgement, 2002) offers that God in Christ comes to us in the incarnation as both our savior and judge. But his act of redemption and reconciliation is one of grace, forgiveness, and mercy. He judges with love and so we are presented to God through the eyes of our beloved Jesus. It is the eyes of his heart that redeem us.
Capon though also says that it is our renunciation and rejection of this coming which judges us guilty. It is our rejection of the spirit of God in our hearts, it is our rejection of our forgiveness, and the rejection of Jesus AND our focus upon the law which in the end finds us guilty.
Paul in Galatians is offering a vision of God who comes and blesses and redeems us. Jesus undoes the power of the law over us. Jesus enables us to be God's children. We are no longer slaves to the law. This is our new reality.
However, the truth is the longer we live focusing upon the law and our own failure and the failure of others - the longer we struggle outside the family. Our message is clear God loves. God forgives. God invites us. In this season of incarnation may we offer a message that does the same and enables us to live in the grace which has come into the world.
Our deliverance is real. May we live it.
Some Thoughts on Philippians 2:5-11
The New Testament Text for this Sunday
"Like Timothy and like Paul's audience, leaders and members of our own congregations are called to imitate Jesus by refusing to insist on their own prerogatives or status, whatever they may be, and serving others in humility."
Commentary, Philippians 2:5-11, Elisabeth Shively, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.
Commentary, Philippians 2:5-11, Elisabeth Shively, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.
"What's in a name? From a biblical perspective -- everything!"
Commentary, Philippians 2:5-11, Elisabeth Johnson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
Paul in this passage uses a first century Christian hymn (possibly even one they would have known) to urge the members of the community at Philippi to have the same mind as Christ. That means that they are to seek to not insist on their own way or their own rights (determined by their social status) but they are to become lower than their stations. Like God in Christ Jesus they are to seek to become power-less and to serve.
Paul invites them to not be better than the other - this is not after all a quality that Christ illustrated.
Commentary, Philippians 2:5-11, Elisabeth Johnson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
Paul in this passage uses a first century Christian hymn (possibly even one they would have known) to urge the members of the community at Philippi to have the same mind as Christ. That means that they are to seek to not insist on their own way or their own rights (determined by their social status) but they are to become lower than their stations. Like God in Christ Jesus they are to seek to become power-less and to serve.
Paul invites them to not be better than the other - this is not after all a quality that Christ illustrated.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.It is serving that one is great. It is in taking the lower seat that you shall be known. It is in washing feet and loving each other regardless of station. It is feeding the poor who have no right to be fed and healing the sick who have not fulfilled the law. It is in eating with those who are not worthy to be eaten with. It is in loving those whom you would not dare to love. These are the qualities by which you will be known as a follower of Jesus.
This is the work of Christ that they are to continue in the world.
People will talk about a lot of reasons why our church is failing. They will ponder the reasons why we are shrinking in numbers. I think in the end it is because we don't do these things very well.
We do not have the same mind as Christ Jesus and are unwilling to become low. We actually regard equality with God as something to be exploited and lorded over those to whom we do not believe deserve such equality. We are unwilling to empty ourselves. We will not serve God or his mission over our own needs and desires. We are quick to take the highest seat. We are not eager to wash each other's feet - especially not the feet of the poor. We are unwilling to hold back or deny ourselves. We will not sit with those unlike us. We will not dine with those we don't agree with. We will not be seen with those who are not like us. We are wholly unwilling to do the hard and difficult work of following Jesus as Jesus has invited us to follow.
Perhaps this is why Paul has us squarely figured out. The truth is like the Philippians what is so bad about our church. It is a comfortable place, for comfortable people, comfortable in our going out and our coming in. Yet Paul may have us figured out...comfortable is not a whole lot like the ministry and character of God in Christ Jesus.
Some Thoughts on Numbers 6:22-27
The Old Testament Text for this Sunday
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
It continues with this statement:
So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.
These are among the oldest continuously-used words of blessing ever. We recite them daily at the beginning of the morning service. Some say them last thing at night. We use them to bless our children on Friday nights. They are often used to bless the bride and groom at weddings. They are widely used by non-Jews also. Their simplicity, their cumulative three-word, five-word, seven-word structure, their ascending movement from protection to grace to peace, all make them a miniature gem of prayer whose radiance has not diminished in the more than three thousand years since their formulation. (Link whole essay here.)
This passage and Rabbi Sacks help us to understand the very importance of the naming, the importance of kinship to the most high God. The beauty of the passage and the beauty of his nature in and outside traditions.
Here is a taking upon one's self God's blessing, receiving it and becoming remade by its very gift.
If we take Pauline theology as enlarging the great mission to include all people, then we have indeed a great blessing far beyond the people of God.
But there is more. I refer back to the essay by Rabbi Sacks:
Why then does the blessing for this mitzvah and no other specify that it must be done with love? Because in every other case it is the agent who performs the ma’aseh mitzvah, the act that constitutes the command. Uniquely in the case of the priestly blessings, the Priest is merely a machshir mitzvah – an enabler, not a doer. The doer is God Himself: “Let them place My name on the children of Israel and I will bless them.” The Kohanim are merely channels through which God’s blessings flow.
This means that they must be selfless while uttering the blessings. We let God into the world and ourselves to the degree that we forget ourselves and focus on others.[6] That is what love is. We see this in the passage in which Jacob, having fallen in love with Rachel, agrees to Laban’s terms: seven years of work. We read: “So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her” (Gen. 29:20). The commentators ask the obvious question: precisely because he was so much in love, the seven years should have felt like a century. The answer is equally obvious: he was thinking of her, not him. There was nothing selfish in his love. He was focused on her presence, not his impatient desire.
There is, though, perhaps an alternative explanation for all these things. As I explained in Covenant and Conversation Acharei Mot – Kedoshim, the ethic of character.
The key text of the holiness ethic is Leviticus 19: “Be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” It is this chapter that teaches the two great commands of interpersonal love, of the neighbour and the stranger. The ethic of holiness, taught by the Priests, is the ethic of love. This surely is the basis of Hillel’s statement, “Be like the disciples of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them close to Torah.”[7]
That ethic belongs to the specific vision of the Priest, set out in Genesis 1, which sees the world as God’s work and the human person as God’s image. Our very existence, and the existence of the universe, are the result of God’s love.
Here then is no mere altar blessing for those who do not receive communion, no mere blessing for the people, or something taken lightly. Instead here is a very holy act, the gift of the blessing is meant as both a theological statement and way of living for the giver and the receiver. I don't think I will give it in the same way in the future.
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