Psalm 148
Luke 2:21-40
Does your name have any meaning?  Certainly!  It has meaning to you.  In a real sense you have defined your name.  Whenever people hear a name, they think of the people they know by that name and those people define the name.  They have positive or negative responses to the name.  One of my best friends name is Dan.  Whenever I hear the name Dan, I immediately have good vibes because I associate my experiences with my friend with the name Dan.
              
Of course, long before we began defining our names, we were given our names because they were important to our parents or to whom ever it was who named us.  We were given our names to carry on a family custom or tradition.  We were given our names because of someone who was important in our parents’ lives.  Some are given names because of the expectations their parents have of them.  There are some biblical names that are horrible.  Consider the three children of Hosea named.   He named his first child, Jezreel, meaning it won't be long before God punishes the King of Israel for the murders that Jehu committed against Jezreel.  Hosea named his second child Unloved and his third child Not-My-People.  Can you imagine what it was like for these kids to hear the role called everyday in school and hear their names, Jezreel, Unloved, and Not-My-People?  Imagine the harassing the other students gave these three with their snickers when the roll was called and at recess when they made cutting comments to them about their names

Many years ago, when our children were very young, we were visiting Peggy’s great Aunt Stella in Ft. Myers, FL.  We were at a restaurant, had finished our meal, and were visiting, talking, enjoying the conversation.  Without warning Aunt Stella blurted out, “Where did you get those dumb names for your kids?”  Now, we had taken seriously the naming of our children.  We chose Melanie because it had a musical ring to it.  We added Kaye for a middle name because that was Peggy’s best friend’s name through elementary, junior high, and high school.  Danita was the name of a dark haired, bright eyed first grade student that Peggy had.  Peggy was convinced we would have a child with black hair so we settled on the name of Danita for our second child if she were a girl.  Girl she was.  Danita was her name.  Auburn was her hair but she has defined the name Danita for everyone who knows her.  Brandon was a name we liked for a boy.  When we were expecting our third child, we settled quickly and easily on this name.  We added Thomas for a middle name because we appreciated the questioning of Thomas in the New Testament.  Peggy also had a great, great uncle who was a questioner and a brilliant mathematician and thus Thomas had a family connection.  It is interesting that Brandon has been a questioner and has excelled in math.  That is more than you wanted to know about our children’s names, but it reflects that names reveal more about those giving the names than it does those who receive the names.  However, those receiving the names eventually define the meaning of the names.  Oh, and back to Aunt Stella’s question about where did we get those dumb names.  I thought that was an unusual question for a woman whose husband was named Barney and whose brother was named Bink.  Where did they get those dumb names?

This is the third day after Christmas, but who is counting?  We count the days before Christmas but few of us count the days after Christmas.  If we do count the days after Christmas we stop counting when we get to 12.  Luke counts to seven and says that a week after his birth Jesus was circumcised and given his name as was the custom in Jewish families.

One of the first tasks that parents of new‑born infants have is to name the child.  In our culture if parents don't have a name by the second day, the hospital staff gets nervous.  Parents had better not even think of leaving the hospital with their baby unnamed.  What if parents told the staff they were not going to name their child until s/he was eight days old?  Panic!

     Well, this is exactly what Joseph and Mary did.  Of course there was no attending obstetrician or nurse standing around telling them they couldn't leave until they gave that boy a name.  Besides it was part of their religious custom to have a son circumcised and give him his name on the eighth day.   
The naming of the child was a means of giving thanks to God for the gift of life.  Joseph and Mary wanted to link Jesus' life with all the rich inheritance of Israel. Perhaps they had some sense of the parenting task expressed centuries later by Kahlil Gibran in his book, The Prophet.
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
            And he said:
            Your children are not your children.  They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.  They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
            You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
            For they have their own thoughts. 
            You may house their bodies but not their souls,
            For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 
            You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
            For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
            You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
            The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might that His arrows may go swift and far.
            Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.  
Whatever their understanding was of the parenting task, when Joseph and Mary came to that significant moment of giving their infant a name, they chose a name that carried with it meaning.  Most names have meanings that have been derived from people who have had those names and given meaning to them.  Often names are words chosen from one language and transliterated into another to convey an idea or express an attitude. The name, Jesus, conveyed meaning.  It comes from the Hebrew Joshua which comes from a more ancient word Yehoshua which means Yahweh is salvation.  Jesus was a very popular name in the first century just as there are popular names today that run in cycles.  Josephus, Jewish historian, found at least nineteen people in the first century who were named Jesus.  Jesus Barrabbas is an example in the New Testament.  The popularity of the name may reflect the rising tide of expectation among the Jews following the Maccabean revolt. 
To distinguish the Jesus we are most familiar with from others, the New Testament writers refer to him as Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus, Son of David, the Galilean, the Nazarene, or the prophet.  As Christianity spread and included more and more Gentiles, the Greek speaking Gentile Church preferred titles with theological connotations.  Christ, which means Messiah, anointed one, became a popular name.  Jesus became identified as Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ.
               
Not long after Jesus was named his parents took him to the Temple for the first time.  He was forty days old.  Their purpose in going to the Temple was to participate in rituals that were ways for Jesus’ parents to acknowledge and act out their convictions that a child is a gift from God. 
 
It was not the encounter that Mary and Joseph had with the temple priest that made the headlines that day.  The ceremony went as planned.  Jesus may have been the first baby dedicated that day or the fifteenth, but apparently there were no surprises.  Joseph and Mary made their offering.  They handed the baby to the priest.  The priest performed the rite and handed the baby back to them.  It was all over but the photographs when Simeon suddenly stepped into the picture. While Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were in the Temple Simeon came into the Temple.  Simeon is described as a righteous and devout man who lived in Jerusalem at this time.

There was no Jew who did not regard his kinsmen as chosen people.  The Jews of the biblical centuries believed they would some day become masters of the world and lords of nations.  There were various views about how this would occur.  Some believed that a great champion would descend.  Others were convinced that another king of David's line would rise and all the old glories would be revived.  Some thought God would intervene in the world by supernatural means.  There were those who were certain that by military might God would force God’s reign upon the world.  In contrast to all of these views there were a few people in the country known as the Quiet in the Land.  These people had no dreams of violence, nor of power, nor of armies with banners; they believed in a life of prayer and quiet watchfulness until God would come.  Simeon was one of these waiting for the day when God would comfort his people.

Simeon lived on the premise that he would see the anointed one of God.  Our tendency is to imagine Simeon as being an old man although Luke does not say anything about his age.  Luke does suggest that he intentionally made his way toward Mary and Joseph, held out his arms and said, “Excuse me, may I hold your baby?”  I suspect Mary responded with an uneasy, hesitant, “Well, sure, I guess.” 
Simeon took the infant in his arms and said the most startling, troubling thing.  “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:29-32)

It was such a beautiful thing to say that the early church turned it into a song, one that we still sing to this day.  We call it the Nunc Dimittis, the “Now Dismissed,” and it can be found in many church hymnals.

All of the hope and confidence Simeon had held for years, he projected onto this tiny infant.  Simeon, who had lived on his hope in God, believed that in this new generation represented in the infant Jesus, the hope to which he had clung would become a reality for all people.  There had been people before Simeon who had similar feelings and who had tied their hopes to other infants, but their hopes had not come to fruition.  Because Simeon's hopes came to pass, his words were remembered, told, retold, and eventually written down, and passed on from generation to generation. 

Although there is great personal meaning in Simeon's blessing, the universal application must not be obscured.  We want to leave the Christmas story as a child's story.  We prefer to be sentimental about the birth of Jesus.  There isn't much threatening or challenging about an infant just to look at him or hold him.  But consider relating to and dealing with that infant every day.  Such an experience is challenging and threatening.  We want to stop the Christmas story with, "The shepherds went back, singing praises to God for all they had heard and seen; it had been just at the angel had told them."  That is the beginning, not the ending, of the Christmas story.  Simeon will not let us stop there.

Simeon saw in the infant Jesus what he and many like him had hoped for for generations.  He hoped what he hoped would become reality during the lifetime of this infant.  What Simeon said of this infant had been said of many infants, but when the life of Jesus took the shape and direction that it did, then Simeon's words in reflection and retrospect became powerful and essential to Luke's biography of Jesus.

Simeon did not permit his celebration to become sugar‑coated sentimentality.  If this infant were to become the "Deliverer," Simeon knew what fate would befall him and the result for his parents would be pain‑stabbing, broken hearts.  As Simeon looked into the faces of the parents of this baby on whom he pinned his hope, he saw the agony which a deliverer and those who cared for him would experience.  Simeon would rather have bitten off his tongue than to have said what he did about sorrow, but in that holy place he felt he had no choice.  Then he handed the infant back to Mary and departed in something less than the perfect peace he had dreamed of all the long years of his waiting.
Luke combined for us the celebration of the gift of life coming in the form of an infant, the gratitude that his parents expressed for this gift through the rites and ceremonies of their covenant community, and the waiting of a man anticipating the greatness of a child.  No doubt Simeon's words were remembered and their significance highlighted by the followers of Christ as they grieved his death and recalled events in his live.  Perhaps it was Mary who told Luke about Simeon.  Then Luke with his skill and perceptiveness artfully wove together the personal meaning and universal application of Simeon's experience and response.  Pervasive in Simeon's confidence, celebration, and concern is his supportive role as servant of hope. 

All of this and much more is wrapped up in a name, the name Jesus which means God is salvation or God is deliverer.  To call his name is to acknowledge that both life and salvation are gifts.  They are gifts from God offered to you and me.  We are free to receive or reject these gifts and whatever our responses are, our lives will be forever altered by either our reception or our rejection of God's gifts of life and deliverance.