December 22, 2013 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The Gift

Calum I. MacLeod
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 1:18–25
Isaiah 7:10–16

“You are to name him Jesus.”
Matthew 1:21 (NRSV)

This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be. We assume religion is about giving a little of our power. Then this stranger comes to us, blesses us with a gift, and calls us to see ourselves as we are—empty-handed recipients of a gracious God who, rather than leave us to our own devices, gave us a baby.

Will Willimon

We continue a fine Fourth Church tradition this morning having our Christmas Cantata on the fourth Sunday of Advent. You are in for a treat. It was sung beautifully at 9:30—the Vivaldi Gloria—thanks to the choir and to the musicians, and I am looking forward to hearing it again. It does pose a dilemma for the preacher: I have a twenty-minute sermon to deliver in about eight minutes. So I’m going to speak very fast . . . no, I’m not; I’m just joking.

A few years ago I taught a class in our Academy for Faith and Life on Scottish Christmas traditions. It was a well-attended class, but it was hard to share with those attending that most Scottish Christmas traditions are just the same as American Christmas traditions. But the one thing I was able to talk about was something that doesn’t seem to be so prevalent here in the United States and that is the use of Christmas crackers at the Christmas dinner table. Do you know what Christmas crackers are? You’ve seen them—the paper things you pull apart, and they have a little pop and inside toys, sort of a novelty. There’s always a joke in the Christmas cracker. The Guardian newspaper ran a competition this year to find new Christmas cracker jokes, and this one was in the top ten:

So how did Mary and Joseph know that Jesus was 7 pounds
and 6 ounces at birth?
Because they had a way in a manger.

That’s terrible, isn’t it? I can’t believe I’m doing this at Fourth Presbyterian Church, for goodness’ sake.

When my father was born, he was the second child to my grandparents but the oldest boy. And they followed a tradition in naming him: they called him after his maternal grandfather, whose name was Calum Iain Mackenzie, my great grandfather.

Now when my father was born in the late ’30s it was not in vogue in the Highlands and Islands to use the traditional Gaelic names, and so for his baptism his name was Anglicized, it was translated into the English, and thus he has the name Malcolm John. Calum Iain in Gaelic is Malcolm John in English. Now one of the ironies about living on an island in Scotland is that because people kept being named after relatives, there was not a lot of newness in the names that people were called, so you would find in a classroom that there might be four or five Malcolms, three or four Donalds, half a dozen Anguses and six Marys, and so what they did in that culture was they gave nicknames to children.

And so somewhat randomly—I think it was my father’s teacher in primary one, in grade school—who decided that he would be called Benji and that is how he would be identified. I think Benji was the name of a dog in a book or something like that. But the name stuck, and still today people who have known my father closely and family members will still call him by his nickname, Benji.

Now ironically his father and mother calling him by the English Malcolm John always referred to him as Calum Iain, which of course is the name I was given. It wasn’t really three names—Malcolm John, Calum Iain, or Benji—because in business my father was known as Malcolm, or Malci, his given name, so depending on what context he would find himself in, he had these different names that people referred to him by.

I am not suggesting that he is multiple personalities or anything like that, just the peculiarity of naming.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Juliet famously pronounces in the second act of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. What’s in a name?

The Bible would disagree with Juliet. You see, names are important in the Bible; they are signifiers of God’s activity in the life of individuals and in the life of the world. Names function as markers of the new things that God is doing in history and in the world.

So go right back to the beginning of the scriptural witness in the story of Abraham. Abraham begins as Abram, exalted ancestor, but God, in calling Abraham to new things, changes his name from Abram to Abraham, meaning ancestor of multitudes. So in the very name that is given by God is the announcement of this new thing that will happen.

And we see it again in the New Testament witness when Saul the Pharisee and persecutor of Christians has his name changed after his encounter with the risen Christ and his call to apostleship to be a messenger of the gospel. Particularly in expanding that gospel to the Gentiles Saul becomes Paul, markers of the new things that God is doing.

As you well know there are two birth narratives in the gospels: in the story of Jesus there is the one in Luke that we would traditionally read on Christmas Eve—the Bethlehem story—and then there is the Matthew story of Jesus’ birth that we read this morning. Luke, in a sense, focuses on the birth story through the prism, through the sight, of Mary. You remember hat beautiful song that Mary sings, “The Magnificat,” about the promise this child has.

In some sense Matthew tells the story through the eyes of Joseph—Joseph who, like his Old Testament namesake, is a dreamer of dreams and in those dreams God speaks to Joseph through the messenger, the angel. And anytime you encounter an angel in scripture, the first thing that is said is “Do not be afraid; do not be afraid.” That’s what the angel says to Joseph in the dream: “Take Mary as your wife; welcome the child, and you are to name him Jesus”—Jesus meaning “Savior,” because in the very name is a description of the action of Jesus’ life and ministry will be one that brings salvation.

There is an old gospel song, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, there’s just something about that name; . . . there’s something about that name.”

Jesus is not the only name by which we know our Savior. The New Testament writers searched the scriptural tradition of their religion in the Hebrew Bible, sought out the prophets, and there they found in the prophets a promise of God acting in a new way.

“A son shall be given to you and you will name him Emmanuel,” which we are told means “God with us.” And two chapters later in Isaiah 9 we will read the prophecy that we read on Christmas Eve that a son is given to us, a gift, and he is named—and you can hear Messiah by Handel as you read this—“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” a son given to us.

Will Willimon is a well -known preacher, a Methodist bishop, and he reflects on the Christmas story in an article in the light of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, that wonderful story that’s so at the heart of Christmas, that story of transformation. But Willimon says if we focus too much on the Christmas Carol we miss the real meaning. The Christmas story, he says, the one according to Luke not Dickens, is not about how blessed it is to be givers but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers.

Christmas is about the gift of the Son whose name is Jesus. Later Paul would write to the young church in Philippi that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend. What a lovely message to us for Christmas. Let us do that this Christmas, you and I: bend our knees at the name of Jesus, bend to look into the manger, and in seeing that child to accept the gift of Jesus, God’s promise of light and hope and love.

Always love.

Amen.