The Naming of Jesus

Some New Year’s Ponderings

Readings: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67; Gal 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21

Today we celebrate the naming of Jesus. Drifting into our consciousness somewhere between the Christmas parties and the observance of New Year's Eve, it almost disappears. In the majority of churches it is only when the celebration comes on a Sunday as it does this year that it is even observed. Yet shake your imagination from its lethargy. For the New Year's feast offers us a wonderful opportunity to contemplate the baffling mystery at the center of our faith.

The time has come. The long-promised Messiah has arrived. Redemption has taken place God's salvation is given to us. We are as Paul points out to us, children of God. God has named us. God has adopted us. We have within us the Spirit of God. And all that was accomplished in a very human way. For God truly became one of us.

What is at the heart of Christmas? Is it not the child in the manger? There is deep significance in the season with just that. The world may celebrate the “Holiday Season” without making any reference to the reason for the celebration, and yet the child in the manger brings about something transformative. For a short time a hush settles over the world. People become kinder. They reach out to one another. It is a time of giving. But of course, there is so much more.

“What child is this?” the world asks. And faith answers, “This is God incarnate.” That is the claim of Christmas. What a wonder that is! Not only a human child, but before that a fetus, a floating presence in the womb of a woman. It defies common sense, does it not? It defies practicality. Couldn't God have accomplished the task in a much more interesting way? Perhaps a simpler way? Certainly in a way which would cause people to take note.

But God, who rules existence, came to us in the common, everyday way that any human person gains existence. God was carried for nine months in the space of a woman's body. God was born in an obscure country in the Middle East. God was born into poverty. God lived and died as one of us. God is with us.

And so we hear once again the story of the shepherds listening to the message of the angels. “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” It was the shepherds who affirmed Mary's faith. They got her thinking about all that had happened. They got her thinking about the message from the angel, about God's plan for her and for her newborn child, about the mysteries that surrounded this birth. And so Mary ponders. She considers until she gets to the heart of the meaning.

Pondering is a good thing to do when it comes to understanding all that God intends for us. It is for us to ponder things in our heart. Of all the times of the year, New Year's is the most likely time to find people pondering. It is a time to look back and to treasure the things that have made us who we are. It is a time to look back on our spiritual journey and see the path that we have followed in our lives, the path along which Christ has led us. It is a time to set new goals. 


New Year's resolutions should be the result of our pondering. However, most of the time they are simply wishful thinking. We resolve to live our lives in healthier and better ways. We resolve to diet and to exercise. Those are good resolutions to make. They are good resolutions to keep. The problem is that most of the time we keep them for a short time and then lose our resolve. I hope that all of us have good goals in mind for this New Year. But I hope we do not stop there. I hope that the end of the year gives us reason to ponder, to reflect on the mystery that is at the heart of Christmas, to really reflect on all of God’s blessings, on all that God has given to us. I hope it is a time to resolve to be better people, to live our lives more faithfully and more prayerfully, a time to let go of our past mistakes, to ask God’s forgiveness and to move on knowing that God is with us.

And so I have a list of resolutions for this coming year. Perhaps in sharing them it will spur me on to keeping them.

“This year I will listen. I will quiet my mind and take in what other people are saying as they
tell their story. I will listen to their words and to their hearts. I will listen to their body language. I will seek to understand before I seek to answer or contribute.

This year I will keep the storms in perspective. Struggles are going to come but Jesus has promised to be there in the midst of the struggles. I will remember that as I walk with God, God will walk with me. 


This year I will be gentle and compassionate. When I awaken in the morning, I will say to myself, “I am baptised. I have died to sin. This day I intend to do what is right in the sight of God.

This year I will give myself. I will follow the pattern of the life of Christ. I will extend the grace of God. I will forgive others just as God in Christ has forgiven me. I will remember that it is not my job to set everybody straight. I will choose my challenges with prayer and wisdom.

This year I will look for opportunities to encourage a child, to love a stranger, to
do something good for someone I don't like, for someone who doesn't like me.

This year I will be a good student. I will read the newspaper. I will read as many books as possible. I will watch less television. I will be affectionate and daring. I will use my God-given talents. Especially I will watch for answers to prayer and give the glory to God. I will give thanks every day for the love of God.

This year I will eat when I am hungry and stop eating at the first sign of fullness. I will lean into life and be excellent. I will share the good news of God's great grace. This year I will see others as holy, treat others with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, be forgiving and forgiven, let God's peace rule my heart, and let the word of Christ dwell in me. I will try to live Scripture in my life. I will live as Christ in the world.

As I ponder, I realize that it is so profound as to be almost unbelievable, the consequences of the Christmas event in my life! But I do believe, that it is by God's grace, that I begin a new year. I celebrate this cosmic event and its glorious consequences for my life and the lives of all those who embrace and follow God as revealed through the Christ of Christmas. Amen.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B

Angels Unaware

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Magnificat; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

It is a bright sunny day in Nazareth. Mary is just returning from the well, her water skin bursting with beautiful clear water. There is always lots of water in their town, a real gift in this arid land. She looks out over the valley far below. Then she climbs the last few steps and enters the courtyard to the small home she shares with her family. Setting the water down for a moment, she begins to reflect on her life. A smile crosses her face as she thinks of Joseph, her husband to be. A kind person with a fine reputation in the community! Yes! Hers is an uncomplicated life. She has a calm and predictable future.

Then suddenly, a great surprise! Even in the brilliant sunlight the courtyard is filled with radiance. A messenger from God! She can scarcely take it all in. Indeed, she can scarcely even look at this stranger. Such an awesome sight he is! She recognizes in this messenger, one who stands in the very presence of God. What is it he is saying to her? “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.”
“Who am I,” she thinks to herself, “that God should favour me? How can I be chosen by God? Why is God choosing me, a poor, insignificant young woman? What is God choosing me to do?”

The angel reassures her. “Do not be afraid for you have found favour with God.” There is that word again. “Favour! Me!” She looks at him tentatively at first, then more boldly. “You will conceive in your womb,” the angel continues. “And bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”

She can’t quite take it in. Her child, the baby she bears, will be the son of the most high. Then she gets a dose of reality. “How can this be?” she asks, blushing a little at her bluntness with a stranger. “How can this happen when I have never known a man?”

“With God all things are possible.” The angel speaks of this uncommon thing in common language to a woman whose concerns are totally realistic. All sorts of things are going through her mind. “What will people think? What will Joseph say? This is craziness. Is this really a message from God?” And in obedience to God, through God’s grace, she answers, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then as quickly as it began, the encounter is over. Mary is left with her pondering, but at the same time with a sense of incredible joy and peace, for she has been chosen by God to be the God Bearer.

“Well!” you may be thinking. “That’s very nice for Mary. God sent her a very clear and distinct message. If only God spoke that clearly to me! God, I wish I could see your messengers, those who stand in your very presence. I have never witnessed an angel. Nothing in my life is like that. Not anything!”

As incredible as it seems, God sent a messenger to a young Jewish girl, very poor, who held no position or prominence among her peers with the earthshaking announcement that she was chosen by God to be the mother of the Messiah. It is God’s act through Mary, God’s coming to us through the birth of Jesus, that makes her, that young Jewish woman, and every one of us, significant as God’s children.
“Here am I,” she said, “I am the Lord’s servant. As you have spoken, so be it.” Her response is untouchable, incomprehensible. For it is a response full of confidence in God’s promise to accomplish God’s purpose. And how many of us would answer so quickly and without reservation? How many of us would even know that God was calling us to servant hood?

God continues to communicate with ordinary, everyday people. The problem is, we are not always attuned to God’s presence. God communicates with those who listen and respond. God turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. If we do not hear, then perhaps we are not tuned in. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place. Or maybe we are looking for the wrong thing.

As incredible as it seems, God still sends messengers. Are there not moments in our lives when God is communicating with us? Have we not all experienced moments of closeness to God, times of insight, of enlightenment.
It is astounding the number of stories there are of peoples’ encounters with angelic beings. This is one of them.

On Sunday afternoon, June 1st 1975, Darrel Dore was on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Suddenly it wobbled, tipped to one side, and crashed into the sea. Darrell was trapped inside a room on the rig. As the rig sank deeper and deeper into the sea the lights went out and the room began to fill with water.

Thrashing about in the darkness, Darrel accidentally found a huge air bubble that was forming in the corner of the room. He thrust his head inside it. Then a horrifying thought sent a shiver down his spine. "I'm buried alive". Darrell began to pray and as he did, something remarkable happened.

Later on he recounted it in his own words. "I found myself actually talking to someone. Jesus was there with me. There was no illumination, nothing physical, but I sensed him, a comforting presence. He was real, he was there." For the next 22 hours that Presence continued to comfort Darrel. But now the oxygen supply inside the bubble was giving out. Death was inevitable. It was just a matter of time. Then a remarkable thing happened. Darrel saw a tiny star of light shimmering in the pitch-black water. Was it real or was he hallucinating? Then the light seemed to grow brighter. He squinted again. It was real. In fact, it was coming from a diver's helmet. The nightmare was over. He was rescued.

Such stories abound. Annunciations happen in any number of ways, through prayer, through worship, through the grace of other people. We ourselves are often messengers of God’s grace, although we may not ever become aware of how or when. In an amazing way, God is born in us and through the Spirit reaches out through us to accomplish God’s purpose in our world. May Christ be born in us this day! Amen.