Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name
January 1, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21
Every proper baptismal font should have eight sides. Don’t worry, ours does. The eight sides are symbolic for the eighth day, the day of resurrection, the day outside the bounds of our normal time, space, and seven-day week. The eighth day is a new day in a new creation.
Today is the eighth day of Christmas, eight days after the Nativity story we all know so well. In accordance with the law of Moses, Jesus is circumcised on the eighth day and given the name Jesus, or Yeshua. The name means save, deliver, rescue. God is not being subtle here. This Jesus, this Yeshua ben Yosef, has come to save us. This Jesus, descended from David, has come to inaugurate a new kingdom, a new creation, a new eighth day.
Luke is the only one of the gospels that takes us to this event on the eighth day of Jesus’s life. And throughout the gospel of Luke, the eighth day will be significant. In Luke 9, Peter, James, and John will see Christ transfigured on the eighth day. It’s a notable difference between Luke and other gospel accounts, which say the Transfiguration happens on the sixth day of the week. For Luke, the Transfiguration must happen on the eighth day because it connects to the Resurrection accounts in Luke 24. There we read that Christ rises at the dawning of the new week. A different way of saying that would be on the eighth day, in the new creation.
But we’re not there yet. We will hear of the Transfiguration on the eighth day in a couple months. We will hear of the Resurrection on the eighth day in time. But today, we are taken to the first account of the eighth day. And on this eighth day there is the promise of something new; the promise of Yeshua, of “God saves,” even us; the promise of a new day, a new dawn, a new creation. Through this Jesus, whom we worship, you and I–and the whole created order–are brought to something new, given a new life and a new name.
So it’s no mistake that our baptismal font has eight sides. It’s all about the eighth day and living as a new creation in the world. For what was old has passed away, and we have been made new as Christ’s name is planted in our hearts, claiming us for a different kingdom.
But, my friends, our being born into a new creation should not mean that we seek to escape the world. By no means. Instead, we are made ambassadors from the Kingdom of God to our world. In a world of violence, we proclaim peace. In a world of fear, we proclaim love. In a world of hatred, we proclaim goodness. In a world of nonsensical terror (the kind we saw in New Orleans early this morning), we proclaim healing and wholeness. In a world desperate to make a name for itself, we proclaim the name of Jesus, which has been planted in our hearts at baptism.
As ambassadors, we stand between two worlds, as it were. But we are clear where our allegiances lie. We are clear about the source of our values. They are from heaven, from the words of Jesus. They are grace and love. They are forgiveness and mercy. They are hope and resurrection. We find this life when we have the same mind as Christ, as Philippians says, humbling ourselves, pouring ourselves out, giving of ourselves in love and in the service of God and neighbor, proclaiming, not ourselves, but the One from whom all good proceeds.
All of this is to say this: We live in a seven-day-a-week world. It is a world with plenty of heartache and brokenness, plenty that needs to be redeemed and healed. This is the world in which we find ourselves, and God does not call us to escape it but to work in it. In this world we have been given a duty, even a delight: to proclaim the eighth day. To live lives that reflect the eighth day promise. With the holy Name of Jesus planted in our hearts, we proclaim and live the good news of God in Christ, pointing to what is coming into the world, pointing to redemption and grace, pointing to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Storied Grace 