Jesus Saves

 

Propers: Name of Jesus, AD 2023 A

 

Homily:

 

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

 

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

I don’t care if you believe in God.

 

I don’t care, because I think it’s a silly question. God is not some sort of sky fairy, who either exists or doesn’t. Anybody who’s studied monotheism, who’s studied classical theism, for more than five minutes knows that God is not a thing within Creation. He does not exist in the way that we do. Rather, God is the source and ground of all existence.

 

He is subsistent existence itself: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; consciousness, being, and bliss; transcendent, eternal, and infinite; omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent; beyond all words or thoughts. In short, God is the term that we use to describe reality in its deepest, truest, fullest sense. So to ask if you believe in God is akin to asking whether you believe that reality is real. It’s a nonsensical question. Of course reality is real; if it ain’t, nothing is.

 

A much better question to ask would be, “What do you think God is like?” In other words, what is most real to you? What are goodness and beauty and truth to you? See, I don’t care whether someone believes in God. I would much rather know what sorts of gods we’re already worshipping. What names do we give to God? What names do we give to our greatest good, the thing to which we bend the knee?

 

Because there are always gods, mind you. Everyone has something that they worship, something that they value above all else, something that gets them out of bed in the morning. Whatever that thing is, that’s their name for God. For some folks it’s freedom, or money, or power, or sex. For some it’s blood and soil, for others fame and fortune, for others it’s just stuff. And for many, it’s “me.” I am the great I am; I worship my pride; I worship my self.

 

Neil Gaiman once wrote that the most monstrous thing about little children is that they cannot quite imagine loving anyone more than themselves. Well, kids grow out of it. But what’s an adult’s excuse? Whether we’re talking about narcissists or about people with chronically low self-esteem, it is truly disturbing to encounter someone whose first question upon waking, and last thought upon going to bed, is: “What about me?”

 

That right there’s the old serpent in a nutshell.

 

It matters what names we give to our God—because names, in the Bible, are not arbitrary labels. They aren’t picked because they sound cute. They are expressions of being, the truth of who we are, revelations of our deepest selves.

 

God is given many names in the Scriptures: the Almighty, the Most High; Elohim, which is interesting because it’s the Hebrew plural for “gods” yet is treated as a singular, as a proper name, as though this God were all gods in one.

 

But the big Name, the Name above all names in the Old Testament, is that enigmatic syllabation: “Yahweh”—a Name so holy that observant Jews often will not utter it. Instead they will say “Lord,” which is how it’s printed in most of our Bibles.

 

Yahweh means “I Am.” It also means “I was” and “I will be,” so that some have chosen to translate it as Eternity. Others point out that since the Hebrew script does not record vowels, the consonants Y-H-W-H sound rather like breathing, in and out. Yahweh is the name that Abraham uses for God, and which is given to Moses in order to identify the God of the Hebrews, the God of the slaves, unto Pharaoh.

 

Yahweh points to God not as a creature but as the Creator, not as a being but as Being itself, subsistent existence itself. Yahweh then is not a god in the sense that Caesar or Mammon or Mars or even Taylor Swift would be considered gods. Yahweh is as far beyond our understanding of divinity as eternity is beyond time, as infinity is beyond space; farther beyond the gods than the gods are beyond us.

 

And that’s why the word “god” simply will not cut it. It means too many different things to too many different people. And it comes with an awful lot of baggage. When people say today that they do not believe in God, they’re usually imagining a god like Zeus or Odin, Thor or the Morrigan. Well, I don’t believe in those either. Whether they exist or not is beside the point; the pagan gods do not represent for us the deepest truth of reality. That’s why early Christians were denounced as atheists.

 

I mean, maybe Jupiter’s up there on Olympus, but if so, so what? He would be a fallen angel, perhaps an exalted elemental; in other words, a creature like you and me. Bigger, stronger, less accountable, perhaps. But not God in the truest sense. Not Yahweh. Other religions know this: Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, certain strands of Buddhism, the Bahai, &c. We all know the difference between God and the gods.

 

Would that the modern world would follow suit. But that would require reading books.

 

Christians have another Name for God; the Name which, we believe, is above all other names; the Name to which, in the fullness of time, all of Creation shall bow. This was the Name given to Mary by the archangel Gabriel; the Name formally bestowed upon the Christchild at His Circumcision, eight days after His birth: the Name of Jesus.

 

Now, in some ways this Name was nothing new. Jesus is a Latinate form of the Greek Ιησούς, which derives from the Hebrew Yeshúa, which is a shortened form of Yehóshua, also known to us as Joshua. Yes, that’s right; anybody named Josh has the same name as Jesus. This includes Moses’ successor in the Book of Joshua, and also the High Priest Jeshua in the time of Ezra.

 

So then why is it important for us that the Son of God the Father, the Son of the Virgin Mary, the adopted Son of Joseph, be named specifically Jesus? This was the Name designated unto Him by heaven, after all—well, that and Emmanuel. See, in Luke’s Gospel, Gabriel just tells Mary to name her Son Jesus, and she does. But in Matthew’s account, the Lord comes to Joseph in a dream and quotes from the Prophet Isaiah, that the Child shall be called Emmanuel, “God With Us.”

 

So this Child indeed is God-With-Us, God incarnate, as I hope we’ve driven home over this Christmas. Yet this is not the Name by which He will be known. He shall be called Emmanuel, certainly, but that is not His Name. His Name is Jesus. And Jesus, it turns out—Yehóshua—is built upon that earlier Name of God, Yahweh. Yehóshua means: “Yahweh Saves.” Or if you prefer: “I Am Salvation.”

 

That, my friends, is precisely who God is for us. That is the deepest, truest revelation of His character, His nature, His purpose, and His inclination toward all of His children: Yahweh Saves, period. That’s who He is and what He does. That’s how Jesus lived out His entire life: by bringing God to the people, by being God for the people; healing the sick, feeding the hungry, welcoming the outcast, rebuking the sinner, instructing the ignorant, forgiving the repentant, and raising up all of the dead!

 

That’s what God does. That’s who God is. God is Jesus Christ our Lord, the Name above all names: King of kings, Lord of lords, and God beyond all gods. If you ever have any doubts as to the nature of God, the nature of reality, the nature of existence itself, look to Jesus Christ. There He rises, bearing the wounds which we have inflicted upon Him; bearing the marks of our sin, of our wrath, of our bone-deep violence; and drowning them all in the ocean of His love.

 

Who is God for us? What is reality for us? Reality is Jesus. God is Jesus. And Jesus saves! He will never stop, never relent, never cease from pouring out His Spirit and His Lifeblood in order to raise up all of this world; because that’s who He is to His core. He cannot be other than Himself. He saves, period. And you cannot stop His love. And you cannot stop His forgiveness. And you cannot ever make Him relent from bringing you home in Him. Believe me, we have tried.

 

That’s who He is; that’s what He does; Jesus saves. And you’d best square with that. For it is not the will of the Father that even one of His little ones be lost. And by God, the Son will see that the Father’s will be done! And if you don’t believe in that, I do not think I care. Because He loves you nonetheless. He forgives you nonetheless. He will save you nonetheless. That’s who Jesus is.

 

He conquered death, He conquered hell, and you’d best buckle up, buttercup; because now He’s coming for you. And your sin doesn’t have a prayer.

 

Jesus saves. Deal with it.

 

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.