FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2025

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

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 “What is in a name,” asks the Bard of Avon. Quite a lot, as it turns out. I once taught a confirmation class where the question arose, and I asked the students to research the background and meaning of their own names. A couple of surprises were in store. Try it when you get a chance, if you haven’t already done so. 

Sometimes those meanings go beyond definitions or family traditions. For instance, when I was growing up, if I heard my first name, it meant Mom was mad about something. 

Names in scripture tend to point us to a meaning well beyond personal identity. One of the more important ones was given to Jacob after wrestling all night with a heavenly being. He is renamed “Israel,” which means “strives with God.” Then there’s Simon whom Jesus renames Peter, which means rock. The same root gives us the word “petrified.” We interpret the name change to refer to the faith found in Peter’s confession of who Jesus is, although Matthew tells us Jesus renamed Simon when they first met. Given other characteristics and responses from Peter after that event, we might have other interpretations. At times he seems to be fairly hard-headed. 

Today’s lessons give us two important names. Isaiah tells us about one, and a messenger to Joseph gives us another. Let’s start with Isaiah. 

Judah is in trouble, as we’ve noted throughout this Advent season. King Ahaz is anxious and wants a quick solution to current issues. The prophet urges the king to have patience. There is a young woman, already pregnant, whose child will grow and be weaned. “By the time the child can eat solid food, those who threaten you will be gone. Just wait, don’t rush into something that might eventually be more harmful than current troubles. Why, soon things will be so good here that parents will be naming their sons Emmanuel, because the evidence will show that God is truly with us.” 

Matthew borrows Isaiah’s words to try to show that the child Jesus is their fulfillment. The Church did the same thing through the centuries. But in Isaiah’s time, the prophet gives a more immediate answer, there’s a more immediate need. Lots of babies will be born and weaned in the nearly 800 years of time between Isaiah and the birth of Jesus. 

When we look at today’s Gospel, it reads like  a contradiction of itself in the way Matthew quotes Isaiah. The name of the child born into Joseph’s care is not Emmanuel. It’s Jesus, or more precisely, Yeshua or Jehoshua. Just as we might today call a boy named Peter by the nickname “Rocky,” Mary’s baby could just as easily be called “Josh

It’s the meaning of the name Yeshua that’s important. It means “one who saves,” or even “God saves.” Those who know history will remember another Joshua, who led the descendants of Jacob, called Israel, into the promised land after Moses departed from them. That Joshua was a great leader and warrior, the one who conquered Jericho. Some of the oldest writings in the Hebrew Scriptures are in a book called by his name. 

Jesus is the Latin word for the Greek translation of the Aramaic name told to Joseph, who, as the human father, is the one to name the child, claiming him as his own. Actual parentage isn’t part of the discussion at this point. By naming the child, Joseph pledges himself as a primary caregiver, and names the son as his own heir. The naming also establishes Mary’s son, Jesus, firmly in the lineage of the descendants of Abraham, a major point of Matthew’s writing. 

God saves. That’s what the name Jesus means. Matthew tells us the divine messenger said to name Mary’s baby Jesus because “he will save his people from their sins.” After all the talk this morning about the meaning of names, let’s look at what that sentence means. 
We could all come up with varying lengths of lists of what we call “sins.” I once walked by a place where some folks were gathered, some of whom I knew, and they were enjoying the effects of inhaling a particularly aromatic herbal substance. I stopped and looked at them and said, “I smell sin!” They laughed, which could have been a by-product of the occasion. They didn’t stop smoking. 

One of our canticles, used regularly as the Glory to God, has the phrase “you take away the sin of the world.” Singular, not a whole list. In order to understand the a contradiction of itself in the way Matthew quotes Isaiah. The name of the child born into Joseph’s care is not Emmanuel. It’s Jesus, or more precisely, Yeshua or Jehoshua. Just as we might today call a boy named Peter by the nickname “Rocky,” Mary’s baby could just as easily be called “Josh.” deep meaning of the names before us today, we need to understand just what sin is.

Throughout its history, the Church has treated sin much in the same way we treat the common cold. We identify and address symptoms because we really don’t seem, or perhaps don't want to understand the real root of the cause. Of course, we know that the common cold is caused by a very old form of the corona virus. But again, we are able to treat only the symptoms, and not eliminate the virus.

A few years ago, one writer, I believe it was Diana Butler Bass, identified sin in a way that helped me, and I want to see if it helps all of us.
Sin is living in a state of being separated from God. It is evidenced in many ways, often through disobedience, oppression of ourselves and others, in attributes such as greed and idolatry and being judgmental. Several different theories have been offered as to how we are redeemed, how atonement is made from a life of sin. All of those in some way seem to ignore what actually happened, the event identified by the names given in today’s lessons.

As human beings, we are always in some way separated from God, because we cannot contain all that is God. Jesus, too, entered into sin by becoming human, although his divine nature meant that he was not separated from God as we are. That is due to his eternal divinity, not because of any physical condition of his earthly parents.

We are saved from sin not by anything we do or could possibly ever do. We are saved from sin because in the coming of Jesus to us as a human baby, God becomes one of us. This is not to make us like God, even though we try to achieve that on our own, which Jesus himself declared impossible. In order to save humanity, God didn’t pay a ransom to the devil, or provide a human sacrifice to replace the animals slaughtered on the altar of the Temple. Instead, God shows us the true depth of redemption by becoming human, by embracing humanity that in a profound way gives us the real meaning of “loving our neighbor as ourselves.” By embodying the teachings of Jesus, known to be the will of God, we allow ourselves to be a small revelation of the presence of God. That is a sign of our salvation.

The birth of the child to be raised by Mary and Joseph will come to be known by those around him in the same way Isaiah tried to explain to Ahaz. His presence, his life, his words and deeds are the evidence given to us that God is with us. Emmanuel. His presence is what saves us; the nearness of the Holy Spirit continues to be that same evidence just as it was with Jesus on the winding paths of Galilee and in the Temple courts in Jerusalem. It’s also the sign of God’s presence on the streets of Wilmington, Delaware when followers of Jesus continue his work of healing and reconciliation, our mutual redemption.

Jesus, Emmanuel, Yeshua, is the fullness of the life of God in human form that accepts even the cross, for it is by entering into death itself that the threat of eternal destruction is cast away, and even death is redeemed. It is in that redemption that we find the completion of the event we celebrate later this week.
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It’s not just about the birth of a baby. Jesus, Emmanuel, means the redemption of humanity, indeed, ​indeed, of all creation, coming full circle so that it’s not just God with us, but ultimately, we are with God. Forever.