Knowing that this morning we would read several names given to Jesus early in his life, even before his birth…I did a little research on names in general. I quickly found “babycenter.com” and a recap of the most popular names from each year, and previous decades. For example, in 2005, the top names given to girl babies were: Emma, Emily, Madison, Kaitlyn. boy babies: Aidan, Jacob, Ethan, Nicholas.

It changes quite a bit from decade to decade. The 90’s saw names like Jessica, Ashley, Brittany, Amanda or Michael, Christopher, Joshua, Matthew.

Now, my mom grew up on a farm in Idaho in the 30’s & 40’s with seven sisters and no brothers. Here’s the kind of names her parents chose for the girls: Margaret, Patty, Leitha, Sharon, Vera (my mom), Alice, Rae and my favorite, Lilly Mae.

If you go way back to the 1880’s, you get some very conventional names, interestingly reflecting the names of British royalty: Mary, Anna, Elizabeth, Margaret, (and the anomaly, Minnie)…John, William, Charles, George, James.

My own name, Daniel, peaked at #6 in the nineties, and is now going downhill. Kelly, don’t laugh too hard…you were at your best as #17 in the 70’s! And, I’m sorry to report, you are now totally off the charts!

I don’t know how you acquired the name you did, but I think it’s safe to say that most American parents these days pick names for their children because they just like the way they sound, OR even more, because they are unique…I guess that’s why Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress, started a new craze by naming her daughter “Apple!”

Once upon a time, names carried greater meaning. Sometimes they had to do with a parents’ hopes for their child. Sometimes they were a description of one’s profession: Baumgartner, for example, means “tree gardner’ in German, as in “O Tannen Baum, O Christmas Tree.” But we’ve mostly lost the sense that names mean something.

In ancient Israel, on the other hand, names often had a readily understandable meaning, normally achieved by giving a child a kind of compound name, with one of the parts proclaiming something about God. So the Hebrew term for Israel’s God, “Yahweh” was often shortened and attached to another word, becoming an “iah” (or sometimes a “ua”) on the end. So Mattaniah=gift of Yahweh. Shemamiah=Yahweh hears (as in, hears the parents’ prayer for their child).

Names were important. Jewish people believed that in order to know a person, you first had to know exactly what their name was. This meant that the act of choosing the name for an infant was a very serious thing.

It’s sometimes very hard for parents to agree on names. So it may be that when in this Matthew story, an angel tells Joseph through a dream what to name the child to come, (or in Luke, where the angel Gabriel tells Mary the same name), they might have been saved them their very first marital dispute! But interestingly, this child has two names attached to it in these few verses, and if we read past them because they are too familiar or we’ve sung them in too many Advent carols, we miss something very important.

As we look at these names, I’m going to slowly give you some pieces from a very short old story that might help us understand their significance. Here’s how it starts:

A man was walking along a path, and as he passed by a lake, he heard a shout

and saw a person in the water who was drowning.

“You are to name him JESUS…” There is a lot going on in this one sentence. On the one hand, this child is quite ordinary and common. When God chose to come to earth in the form of a baby, despite whatever miraculous things it signified about the future, there was a great deal of the everyday in it. Jesus was a person, fully a human being.

The painting on the front cover of your bulletin helps emphasize this. It’s from the 16th century, an artist named Bruegel the Elder, and called The Numbering at Bethlehem, referring to the Roman call that went out for people to go to their home towns to register or “be numbered” for taxation purposes. At the left you see the crowd of people doing that. Further right, you can make out Joseph (carrying his carpenter’s saw) leading Mary in on a donkey. The important thing is that no one notices them. Everyday life just goes on, shoveling, cooking, playing, building and conversation goes on all around. A pregnant woman draws no attention, you see those every day. Jesus came into our life as a human being.

When Joseph and Mary are both told to name the child to come “Jesus,” I suspect that neither of them keeled over with shock. “Jesus,” or “Iesus” is the Greek version of a name quite common in Israel: Yeshua, or we would say Joshua. There are Joshuas in the OT, particularly the lieutenant to Moses who brought the people of Israel into the promised land. Joshua (Jesus) MEANS “Yahweh saves, or Yahweh helps, or Yahweh rescues.” So we see in this name the characteristic of God, the desire of God’s heart, that God is a God who wants to help, who wants to rescue his people, all people. So let us change our story.

A man was walking along a path, and as he passed by a lake, he heard a shout and saw a person in the water who was drowning, AND HE WANTED TO HELP.

When Matthew’s story says “You are to name him Jesus…for he will save his people…,” there is a word play that we totally miss in English. We might catch it if we substitute “God saves” for Jesus. “You are to name him God SAVES, for he will SAVE his people...” But how would this happen? Can it happen? Perhaps God has the desire and is willing to use Jesus, but is he able? Can he really do anything, in this man who lived 2,000 years ago? If NOT, then the story sounds like this:

A man was walking along a path, and as he passed by a lake, he heard a shout and saw a person in the water who was drowning and he wanted to help.

So he jumped into the lake to help, but being unable to swim, both of them soon drowned.

“You are to name him God Saves, for he will Save his people from their sins.” The sentence gets more and more interesting. This child will be a Savior, but what kind of savior? THE Savior, who surprisingly comes not to save militarily or economically or nationalistically but to save first and foremost…people from their sins. To forgive.

Jesus came to them as a savior, comes to us as savior. He wants to save us FROM a life full of self-focus and meaningless days, to save us FROM years of emptiness and an eternity of loneliness, to save us TO the joy of knowing who we are and what we were designed to be in the first place: kingdom people. God’s people.

Then comes the other name that is attached to this baby even before it’s birth. Emmanuel. Three Hebrew words put together: Im (with) Manu (us) El (God),

Im-manu-el, Immanuel, “with us God.” This is the same word used in Isaiah, not only in the passage Matthew quotes here, but in Isaiah 8:10 when the word goes out to Israel’s enemies, “Take counsel together, but it shall be brought to naught; Speak a word, but it will not stand, for IM-MANU-EL.” God is with us.

Jesus comes as a human, but far more than a human, not only as evidence of the intention of God’s heart, but God himself entering history for a purpose and with the power and ability to save, forgive, wash clean, rescue.

A man was walking along a path, and as he passed by a lake, he heard a shout

and saw a person in the water who was drowning and he wanted to help. So he jumped into the lake, swam to the person and then got them safely back to shore.

Perhaps we could add to the story again, that upon reaching shore, the rescuer died, only to later live again. But that would be moving us too quickly through Christmas to Easter.

What the two names of this child tell us this morning is that something huge and unique and far-reaching has gone on, is going on, and will go on. We are learning about:

• the God whose heart is turned towards us,
• the God whose desire is that all would come to know Him,
• the God who understands exactly what our life and death are about, the God who has visited us,
• the God who in the foolish weakness of the cross has the power and ability to save us and who in resurrection does,
• the God who jumps into the water where we are struggling and dying.

This is the God who comes to us as a child with two names: Jesus. Immanuel. God Saves. God With Us. Blessed be the name of the Lord.