Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, January 1, 2021 – Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

I’m sure you heard it. Father Mathias actually emphasized it in the way he proclaimed the gospel. The first story ends with the shepherds going home. The first story begins with, “When the eighth day came for the circumcision.” And the story continues with the Presentation in the temple, which is the gospel we read last Sunday. Why was it done that way?

The scriptures that we have at Mass are placed there for the purpose of worship, not for the purpose of teaching or learning. And so they’re frequently edited in ways that we would not think about if we picked up our bible to read them. Very frequently there are lines left out of the scriptures we read at Mass on Sunday, because the people who composed our Masses did not want to distract people from the main point they wanted them to get out of the reading for the purpose of that Sunday’s worship. Many of these readings have been the same for centuries.

When I was studying this one, for this Mass, I discovered that this reading has been the same since Henry the 8th had one of his henchmen recompose the Book of Common Prayer. It’s been every Christian church’s reading ever since then. How come? Because there are several things that the church wants us to call to mind as we pray this morning.


The first has to do with names. The second has to do with law. And the third has to do with pondering or meditation. Those three don’t seem to be very connected. Those of you who have lived in Wurtsboro for a long time have a habit of referring to what’s outside there as “Old Route 17.” But it’s really not anymore; it’s Wurtsboro Mountain Road. When you go up Wurtsboro Mountain Road, that big right hand turn is now called “County Route 56” but, when we were kids, we knew it as the Mountaindale Road. There was even a sign that said “Mountaindale Road.”

I just got used to calling Horton Hospital “Orange Regional” when they went and changed it again. Now it’s called Garnett Medical Center. And a long, long time ago, I spent a weekend in Hamilton Avenue Hospital in Monticello, which became Harris Hospital, then Catskill Regional, and now it’s one section of Garnett Health Center.

Names change all the time. And names carry weight with them. Usually, when roads are renamed, there’s either an expedient or a political reason for them being changed. The same thing is true when institutions’ names are changed. There is something the institution wants us to know about it when it changes the name.

So what the church did in our scriptures today is it gave us three name changes by which to ponder about God. I said the first one was hidden. In the book of Numbers, what Kathy read, is known as the “Blessing of Aaron.” And it says, “The Lord this, and the Lord that, and the Lord the other thing” as the blessing. The problem is that, in the original Hebrew, the word wasn’t Lord. The word was Yahweh. “Yahweh bless you and keep you. Yahweh let his face shine upon you.” This was extraordinary. In the book of Exodus, which is one of the set of five books in the beginning of the Bible, the very first time since the fall God risks intimacy with the human race by revealing to Moses - who at this point is a Jew by birth but has no real understanding of his religion - reveals to Moses at the burning bush that his name is “I am.” “Yahweh.” That’s what the syllables means in Hebrew, “I am, or I am He.” Then nothing is said again about the name of God until the book of Numbers - which is also about the wandering in the desert - where God tells Moses to tell Aaron that this is how you are to bless the people. “May Yahweh let His face shines upon you, and be gracious to you, and so on. Use my name to bless the people.” This would have been a scandal to the Jews of the time, because the name of God was so sacred that it was rarely, if ever, pronounced. And, in the Ten Commandments, that is the meaning of “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Because ancient peoples used the names of their gods to conjure curses against their enemies, and that was abhorrent to the people of Israel. So for Aaron to be told to actually use God’s name to bless the people, was an extraordinary move forward in intimacy between God and God’s people.

In the gospel today we are reminded by Luke that it was the Angel Gabriel who told Mary (Matthew tells us the Angel Gabriel told Joseph) that they must name the child to be born Jesus. The word Jesus, in English, comes from the Hebrew name Yeshua. Yeshua can be translated to English in lots of different ways. Joshua - both of the Joshuas in the Old Testament were Yeshua. So was Jesse, the father of King David, actually a Yeshua. And now comes a new Yeshua, whose name means “Yahweh saves.” The next step in intimacy. The reason why you are allowed to be blessed by the name of God, is because God intends to save you. The question is, save you from what?

And so, in the second reading, we get the third step of intimacy. St. Paul says to the Galatians - he’s arguing with them about the lack of necessity of keeping the Torah once they are baptized - he says, “In the fullness of time, God sent his Son, born of woman, born under the law, so that we might be freed from the burden of the law. And the proof that we are freed from the burden of the law is that, in the Holy Spirit, we can call God ‘Abba. Abba.’”

I don’t know how many of you are fans of NCIS, but there was this amazing episode a long time ago when Ziva David, who was a Mossad agent on loan to the American government, is in Washington, DC when her father, who was the head of Mossad, comes to America on a secret mission to cement a peace between Egypt and Israel. And, during this secret mission, he is assassinated. And Ziva arrives on the scene. She has been estranged from her father for years, ever since she was a little girl. But she still loves him deeply, despite her anger. And she enters the place where his dead body is lying. And she cradles him in her arms and she whispers, “Abba, Abba.” And it’s then that I knew the secret of what St. Paul says - that “Abba” is the most tender word that a human being can use to address God. “Abba.”

That’s what St. Paul says, is the way in which Yahweh saved us, what Jesus did for us, was to make it possible for us to receive the Spirit of God that allows us the ultimate intimacy with God. And in that intimacy, all law dissolves. That’s what St. Paul is saying. It’s not necessary anymore for us to have a list of things that we have to do or avoid in order to please God, because God is intensely pleased with us. And what He has done is given us the freedom to live a genuine human life. There are parameters to a genuine human life. A genuine human life does not involve itself in certain kinds of behavior, and adopts other certain kinds of behavior, but not because there are laws about it, but rather, because to adopt the opposite behavior is to be less than the free person that God chose you and me to be.

And so our gospel began today with an action of Mary. It’s repeated several times in Luke’s gospel, “And Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” On today’s Feast of Mary, the Mother of God, we’re invited to ponder whether or not we are willing to risk calling God, “Abba.” Because intimacy is a two-way street. If we are willing to take the risk of calling God by the most intimate name, then we must allow Him to call us most intimately, which means there are certain things we can no longer allow in our lives. And if we’re willing to take that risk, then we discover what true freedom means.