Readings: Psalm 8, Luke 2:15–21
Christmas for us in Christendom has become one thing, and in one sense even a simple thing. But like all the truths of that tradition, it is in another sense a very complex thing. Its unique note is the simultaneous striking of many notes; of humility, of gaiety, of gratitude, of mystical fear, but also of vigilance and of drama…All this indescribable thing that we call the Christmas atmosphere only hangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance or fading vapour from the exultant explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago.
G.K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man
Will Keillor
One of the joys of twelve days’ Christmas reflection is you start to hear the striking of these many notes that Chesterton describes, and to make out some of the variety of the reverberations. The eighth day of Christmas, Holy Name Day, seems filled with many of these notes. Although it makes the tale grow a bit long, it seems to need to start at the beginning on this naming day.
Once an angel, a fallen angel already perhaps, appeared with a sort of promise. A promise that required reaching out and taking the fruits of the tree of knowledge. The consequence was death, and the promise, to the extent it had any truth, basically amounted to: you won’t die immediately, so who cares? The holy eternal to be exchanged for the pleasures of the temporal.
Later, Cain and Abel attempt sacrifice to God. Perhaps humanity can go on in a broken world with just this pittance of a relationship to the Holy, Eternal God. But they cannot even agree on the way. God’s favor shown to Abel incites in Cain a murderous rage. The horror of death grows. It comes to a head in the days of Noah, when the full extent of the perversion of the fruit of knowledge into “what is right in your own eyes” has unfolded. Humanity hangs not even by a thread. Yet Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord: a tiny contingent of righteous obedience. A little stable of hope was built to float over the terror of devastating death. It is perhaps well to feel, to recall, on this eighth day of Christmas, much like on the fourth day, how close we have been to utter ruin.
Skip forward to another angel, this time with a promise from God: a birth and a name. Life and knowledge. Mary had found favor in the eyes of the Lord. (What is this favor? Perhaps its genesis reaches back even to the moment when the Spirit of God hovered over formless waters, and the Word was with God and was God). Now, by the eighth day of Christmas, we are at the part where an eight-day-old infant is in a stable manger. But what child is this, as the song asks? Mary ponders it in her heart; should that be all? Much like when Noah sent out the dove, some vital questions still hang in the balance.
Vital questions, and they seem answered by the ringing of many notes. One note is sounded by Joseph. A somewhat less pleasant name of this eighth day of Christmas is the Feast of the Circumcision. In some depictions, the child is brought to a rabbi, but that was not the practice until much later. No, it is Joseph who will be taking up the knife. What he feels about this child at this moment is not told. Why should he, like Cain, not rage that God has favored Mary and humbled him? Cain would not be his brother’s keeper, but Joseph heeds a call to obedience, to be a keeper of this child.
Have you ever wondered what is the good of obedience? Days, years, generations pass and nothing much seems to come of it? Joseph, who in Matthew’s account is called “faithful to the law,” is part of a people keeping alive the sign of an ancient covenant. “My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant”, God had declared. But God’s declarations now seemed to have long ceased for Israel. Nonetheless, on this eighth day, in the final requisite act to keep that covenant, this requirement of the law is visited upon the child, because he has become flesh. And the child is named Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. The note from Joseph sounds from an ancient Jewish rite like the long crescendo of a kettledrum that suddenly is silenced.
Still it is not all. The Holy Name holds a heavenly note. As the shepherd David proclaimed in psalm how majestic is the Name of the Lord in all the works of His hands, so the glory of the Name proclaimed by the angels shines over shepherds in their night watch. As to Noah’s family, a sign is written across the sky; as to Moses on the mountain, the glory of the Lord shines about them. Yet they receive not laws cut on tablets of stone, but words of favor uniting the eternal song of glory with this song of temporal joy for the child named the Saviour, Christ the Lord. They are not asked to find the pick of their sheep to be slaughtered at altar, but to go themselves to the place where God’s presence rests. And so they do, and with them, the balance of history changes. Not to say the danger is not still desperate; all the power and fear of death are not easily left behind in the hills. Questions remain about this new plan.
Questions like those that stalked Yehoshua and the other spies. They had crossed the river and taken up a path into the country of Canaan that lay beyond. As they neared a city they came upon surrounding vineyards and grazing livestock. Their desert-hardened eyes drank it all in, until they stood by the shadows of the stout defenses. As they returned, they must have fallen into dispute. The sensible might be saying, “promises and prophecies are fine and all, but if we go in for Canaan, we will surely die.” Crossing back from that blissful country into the wilderness, as the old Sunday school song says, “10 said no and 2 said go.” Caleb stood with Yehoshua; 2 for the promised land.
I think that is about where we are at in the story, here on this eighth day of Christmas and first day of the new year: shepherds returning from the stable. Angel-song may fade quickly when you are returning to dark hills. Like the workers in the painting by Chełmoński, we may look up and wonder. Faith requires courage. So let the last note on this eighth day ring from the angel: fear not; these are tidings of joy. Let us run and see, and stand like Caleb with Jesus our brother, bearing witness in this world to the eternal, Holy Name of Jesus through which we may enter our rest.
Almighty God, your blessed Son fulfilled the covenant of circumcision for our sake, and was given the Name that is above every name: Give us grace faithfully to bear his Name, and to worship him with pure hearts according to the New Covenant; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.