Christmas 1, Year B
1st Reading : Isaiah 61.10 – 62.3 / 2nd Reading: Galatians 4.4-7 / Gospel: Luke 2.15-21
Text: You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give (Isaiah 62.2).
Our friends had been warned by the social worker handling their adoption case that the judge was a stickler for protocol. Liz and Kevin aged about 6 and 4, had been carefully prepared for the occasion, well scrubbed and dressed in their Sunday best, but this was 40 years ago, and everyone was a bit apprehensive. In the event all was well. The judge made sure that the children could see and understand what was being done for them, and after the papers had been signed, he dressed them up in his wig and gown to cavort around his chambers. Liz opined that he had made them ‘proper Watsons’. They had indeed been called by a new name, marking their transition into a new family relationship, and they were sent home with firm instructions to celebrate the occasion with their favourite food. One chose chocolate cake, and the other chose chips, so that’s what they had for their tea.
When Paul writes to the Galatians about the effect of the incarnation on their lives, he uses the metaphor of adoption. Their new status – our new status – is no longer that of slaves, bound to a master by a set of formal obligations enshrined in the law. We have been adopted as God’s children, and as such we are linked to him by family bonds of love given and love received. The Spirit teaches us to call God: Abba – Father. As God’s children we are learning to relate to him with the same spontaneous intimacy and trusting confidence that characterises the relationship between a loving child and a loving parent. Like those ‘proper Watsons’, we have become full members of God’s family, and that really is something to celebrate.
The prophet Isaiah foresaw something of the kind. The people of Israel, clothed with the garments of salvation, would receive a new name. They would be a crown of beauty, a royal diadem in the hand of God. As is so often the case, when God’s promises are fulfilled, they turn out to be even more wonderful than the prophet had dared to dream. In this case, we have become so much more than a precious ornament in the hand of God – we have become his beloved children.
But there is another more direct sense in which we have received a new name. Christians was the new name first used at Antioch in Syria (Acts 11.26) to identify the new sect within Judaism, whose adherents believed that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah, the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies. A little later, when Paul was arrested and questioned as a trouble-maker, there is already a sneer in King Agrippa’s voice as he asks Paul whether he is trying to persuade him to become a Christian (Acts 26.28). Later still, when the letter attributed to Peter is being written from Rome, the sneer has become so prevalent as a term of abuse that Peter encourages his readers not to be ashamed to be called Christians, but rather to bear the name and any suffering it may attract as a badge of honour.
To-day we are not so likely to be openly abused or sneered at as thought a bit old-fashioned for being Christian, but it doesn’t matter what others think. For us Christmas is so much more than a long holiday week-end. There are so many ways for us to celebrate the wonder and the mystery of the incarnation. Like the shepherds we can share the good news with everyone we meet, as we go back to our work, glorifying and praising God for all that we have heard and seen. Or like Mary, we may be moved to treasure the wonder and the mystery of the incarnation, as we ponder in our hearts what it may mean for us and for all mankind. Or as children celebrating our adoption, to use Paul’s language, we can proudly wear our new name as a badge of honour, and we can celebrate with a feast, as families do when they get together. As grown-up adopted children we don’t need chocolate cake and chips, but with solemn joy we take the bread and the wine that are to us the Body and Blood of Christ. As we eat and drink these precious things in remembrance of Him, we learn little by little, week by week, what it means to know God as our loving Father, to belong to a new family, to be proud to be called by a new name.