Lectionary Readings: Feast of the Holy Name
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. As was custom in the Jewish culture, all male children were circumcised on the 8th day,1 and were also given a name. Now, we know that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream before Mary gave birth, and told him that the child should receive the name Jesus.
And in that same passage, we are told that the name Jesus – or “Yeshua” in Hebrew – means, “God saves.” Joseph was to name the boy Jesus because he would “save his people from their sins.”2
“From their sins.”
One of the comments I get the most often when talking with people is that they don’t need saving. Many don’t understand the concept of sin. The most succinct explanation of sin that I’ve heard is that sin is “anything that keeps you from loving God, and loving your neighbor.” And when people comment about how they are kind, that they care for their neighbors, and that they are good people, I say, “Wonderful.” And then I ask, “Do you bend the knee and declare Christ the Lord?”
You see, this is where the rubber meets the road. In the ancient world – and even in the medieval times – “to bend the knee” means to submit to someone. And people hate the idea of submitting to someone else. They want to be free – they want to be their own lord and master – and they want to be the one who controls their own destiny.
All well and good. The problem is that people have only ever come to understand the idea of submission from watching too many fantasy movies with kings and queens, with despots and tyrants, and to them, to “bend the knee” means that you have accepted defeat; that you have been beat down and forced to pledge loyalty to someone or something. They see submission as defeat.
And in the world, in the company of other humans, submission often is defeat.
But “at the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”3
In the world, among other people who seek to be the Lord of their own domain, submission is defeat.
But in the kingdom of God, submission is blessing. Submission means that we receive more than we lose. It is freedom wrapped up in what seems like bondage.4 You see, for most of us, the saving we need is not from physical or spiritual harm. Instead, the saving most of us need in our lives is saving from ourselves. Because when the time comes, we often behave in ways that seem to protect ourselves. But what we desire often simply makes things worse. And at the very least, it sidesteps a blessing.
I’d like to tell you a story about my neighbor. I don’t mean “neighbor” in the sense that they live next door to me; I mean it in the sense that anyone who is not looking back at me in the mirror is my neighbor. There was a particular individual that I knew a while ago, in my years as a pastor, who would call up or stop by. Each time, we would seem to have a decent conversation, right up until the end. At that point, this person would find something to complain about, sometimes about me, other times about the church, or would say something entirely unloving and unkind about other people or groups of people. For a phone call or in person conversation that had at first seemed to go well, these closing comments always left a bad taste in my mouth.
I definitely did not like this person much. And if I had the choice, I would have ignored this person, and not given it another thought. I would have treated them with the same contempt and irritating behavior that they seemed to show to me each time we talked.
But God has commanded us to love our neighbor.
And so I did. Spending some extra time talking with this person before church services. Spending time saying nice things as people filed out of the church after the service. Inviting them to various functions in the church, whether they could come or not. They learned through our conversations, and through my efforts to show God’s love that they could behave in all sorts of irritating ways, and would still be welcome.
And something amazing happened to this person. Their attitude began to change. Their demeanor began to change. Their interactions with other people began to change. They began to say nice things to other people. They began to let other people know that they care.
It was a transformation. A true change.
Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to love God. I can tell you that being kind and loving to this person felt like defeat, like submission, like bending the knee for the wrong cause – and it felt like I was giving in, and giving up. But it was because I know that I have been commanded to love my neighbor, I bent the knee to the one who created all: the God of Love, and the Lord of Life. And that is the only reason that that relationship turned from one that felt like washing my face with sandpaper into one where God was working, transforming angry people into individuals who are free to speak their minds and still belong.
You see, the commandments of Jesus to love God and love our neighbor are not two separate commandments. They are really just one commandment. You cannot love God without loving your neighbor, and you cannot love your neighbor fully, without also loving God.5
And all that starts with bending the knee to the name that is above all names.
It will feel like defeat at times. It will feel like giving in, and giving up. But when we submit to Christ, by bending the knee and truly allowing God to be the ruler and commander of our lives, then we find that submission to God is not defeat.
Instead, it is the beginning of a blessing. It is the beginning of salvation – the beginning of being saved – even from ourselves. It is the beginning of peace, and the beginning of freedom.
Freedom, because God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine.6
When we put everything under submission to God.7
[There was no video recording or live stream of this service.]
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on January 1, 2026.]