Sermon - January 1, 2008: The Name of Jesus

Pastor Heisley

It was blessing with a knife. A sharp, painful knife. Not like the queen of England blesses, touching the shoulders gently with a sword, but like a surgeon, like someone who knows how to cut flesh. The baby Jesus was 8 days old and he was circumcised. Cut. Blessed. Blessed by the ancient sign of God’s love for the people Israel. Blessed by being made part of God’s covenant people, blessed and made both God and a person. All with one painful cut. 

Jesus was far too young to remember the blessing, for sure. But it left an indelible mark on him. Ritual made him who he was. God reached out and made him a Jew both by birth and by blessing, just as people had been blessed by God throughout the ages. 

We read of an even more ancient blessing in today’s first lesson. The word came from God to Moses. He was to tell Aaron and his sons and everyone who came after them that to bless someone was to act in God’s name. “The Lord bless you and keep you.” To bless someone was to give the gift of God’s presence and power for life. “The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;” To bless someone was to bring light and meaning into their world. “The Lord life up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” To bless someone was to give the gift of seeing God. The gift of living in God’s protection, with God’s peace, throughout life. 

I don’t know how it is for you, but every time I stand before you and bless you I am awed and delighted at the work of God going on in our midst. It’s not about me. It’s about God coming to all of us together. And we are blessed with God’s blessing. Blessings are as ancient as God’s powerful, creative love for the universe that God created. But in Jesus, in Jesus the newborn one who is blessed with a knife, in Jesus whose blood is first let by a rabbi, in Jesus who dies when his blood is finally let by agents of the government, in Jesus blessings become a new thing. They unite us with him, as his people. They unite us with him in his suffering, in his living as a human being just like us. 

Blessings unite us with Jesus’ compassion and with his grace toward the broken world in which we live. And they call us to gather regularly so that more and more we can be blessed. Then, after we have been blessed, they call us to leave each other so that we might be blessings to the world. 

In just 52 days I will have served you, served the Lord, here at Mount Olive, for 10 years. You have repeatedly blessed me as I have sought, as I have struggled to be a blessing to you. We have worked diligently to speak the word of the Lord to each other and to strangers, in the name of Jesus. I find it remarkable that so many of us shake hands warmly and even hug and kiss during the sharing of the peace and as we leave. I don’t think that this is an empty ritual. It is the very act of blessing each other as Jesus has blessed us. It is the act of reminding ourselves that we belong here and we belong to a God who has loved us in the blood of the covenant he made with the Jews and in the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. It is the act of bounding boldly over and over into the work of sharing the good news that the darkness of this life, the frigid nature of this world’s challenges, the work of spreading the gospel is not only what we do, but how we should live, who we are, who blessings make us become. In sharing our love and admiration for each other we break open Jesus’ life for the world to see, for all generations to adore. 

Aaron and his sons mediated God’s concern for us through the constant blessings of the people. Jesus became God’s latest blessing, the blessing of a hope that all bloodshed, all destruction, all that thwarts the power of peace will be washed away in his blood. And now we are a people of blessing. And this is the name of the blessing: Jesus. Amen.

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