What's in a Name?

I don't know about you, but I like Christmas. I like the presents, but you'll probably notice that Christmas changes as you go through the seasons. There was a season when the children woke at 4:00 a.m.; they were so excited. Looking around at you, I don't know whether you've had one of those mornings or not, but I'm sure if you don't remember what they were like, you can sort of imagine what they were like over the past few years. Because we have grown-up children, we've started doing something different—grown-up children without really any grandchildren yet of a certain age—but we've started playing this game, and it goes like this: the parents buy enough presents for everybody who's going to be there, and you wrap them up, and there's no cards or anything like that. What happens is you draw lots, and whoever gets the highest—it's playing cards basically—whoever gets the highest card gets to pick first. They get to pick whatever present they want, and then they open the present to see what it is, and that's their present unless someone after them decides they want to steal the present.

There are rules, like you can only steal it two or three times, and people open up the present and they work out whether they're going to keep it or not or they're going to take somebody else's present—you know, like the Star Wars doormat, which was very popular one year, or the $50 worth of movie tickets. However, the best present in my mind anyway is the limited edition Wedgewood plates that I inherited from my parents. In fact, I didn't inherit just one; I inherited many of them. Last year, this was the plate—there you go, beautiful isn't it? That is the present that, in my mind anyway, everybody wants. This one is called "Die Fahrt im Glueck," which apparently is German for—let me just see here—it is "journey to happiness". The fact that I have it means I was stuck with it; I mean, I must have won it. They're very valuable; they're limited edition; you get a certificate with it. They're very rare—this is B3624—so there's not many of them around. In fact, I had a quick look on eBay and you can buy one in England for £18 or best offer, but it's still there, so I figure there's no best offers otherwise it would still be there. It says something like it invites us into a world where happiness is not a destination but the ride itself. Anyway, I can't work out why that would be, but every year one of these gets wrapped up, and sometimes we disguise them in other boxes so that no one quite knows what it is until they get stuck with it—I mean, they win it. I have enough there so if I give one away a year, I should live to about 93.

At this time of the year, we hear about another gift, don't we? We just had it read to us that God gave his son into the world. The great God who created everything has become a human that He might lift us back up into friendship with himself. That's a big deal. Jesus' birth is anything but ordinary; as we read, an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream. I don't know whether you've seen an angel—I've never seen an angel—but if there is an angel that is telling you about it, it must be a very big deal. It's a little bit hard to take in the idea that the great God who created everything would become a human. It says in verse 21, "Mary would give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because He'll save His people from their sins".

For those of you who have had children, I wonder whether you can remember back to the time when you had your first child. There were so many unknowns in the days before scans; you didn't even know whether it was going to be a boy or a girl. These days you know ahead of time, and you can paint the nursery and organize the clothing based on what you know, but of all the things that are important, what would you call the baby? For our first child, we were going to call the baby, I think it was either Beatrice or Evangeline, and that was pretty much because there was a television show where the two protagonists were Beatrice and Evangeline. That's what we were going to call our child until a boy popped out. So for then the second child we thought Beatrice and Evangeline might be good, but then a second boy. And then for the third child, it was a third boy, until the fourth was a girl and we called her Grace because we'd moved on at that stage.

But so important is it that we understand the birth of Jesus that an angel says, "Call Him Jesus". It's a version of Joshua—the Greek version of the Hebrew word Joshua—and it just means He'll save His people from their sins. Never before has God come like this; never before had God become human, down into the world of humans. You say to yourself, "What is God doing becoming a human?" and we don't even bat an eyelid about what it's like to be human because we've been human all our lives, right? But what is God doing becoming a human? Well, the name tells you: Jesus. Not everyone has a name that describes them. I heard of a music teacher whose name was Miss Csharp. A young athlete in the Rio Olympics—very true—his name was Aaron Far; slow it down: Aaron Far. A novelist called Paige Turner, but my favorite is the French goalkeeper called Dominic Dropsy. Mostly our names don't describe us at all, but when it comes to Jesus, His name means savior, for that is exactly what it is; He will save His people from their sins.

It's a strange and awkward word today, "sin". It often means we've done something kind of cute and naughty, like a guilty pleasure, like we've had too much chocolate or too much pudding on Christmas day, or maybe we got a little bit tipsy or something like that. But really, it's putting the finger on a problem and a solution when it says His name is Jesus; He will save His people from their sins. It's putting its finger on a problem and a solution.

A few years ago, I went to see the musical Rent. It was at the Hayes Theater at Potts Point; it was opening night, and I'd been asked to go and see it to write something about it. I decided I'd ride my motorcycle in because I thought it'd be easier to park. Well, that was a bad idea because no sooner had I left home but it poured with rain. There was so much rain I could barely see where I was going, and when I arrived at the Hayes Theater, I spent 30 minutes in the bathroom wringing out my clothes so that they were basically presentable. The show began, and it was a terrific show, except about 20 minutes into the first act, the fire alarm went off. If you've ever been in a theater when the fire alarm goes off, you sit there thinking to yourself, "Will someone please turn that off? It's obviously a false alarm". You keep waiting and you keep waiting for it to go off, and then you start thinking well, maybe it isn't a false alarm. Then they start saying over the loudspeakers, "Evacuate, evacuate".

So we all left the theater and the fire brigade came, and I sat out in the street and I didn't know anyone. We all sat out in the street, and I was wet and I was cold, and it turned out that when you have a smoke machine on stage, you need to turn off the smoke alarms, but no one turned off the smoke alarms. So the fire brigade came, and after about 40 minutes in the street we went back in and the players took it up from the last word that they'd spoken. It was very impressive, but it was a false alarm. So when it says you'll name him Jesus because He'll save His people from their sins, it's both the fire gate and the fire alarm.

But my question is: is it just a false alarm? See, there are plenty of things to be alarmed about out there in the world, aren't there? I mean, there are lots of problems out there, but you are not the crazy leader who decides to invade another country, are you? And I'm not the media magnate who sparks a culture war, and you are not some trolling keyboard warrior who's fostering hate speech, and I'm not causing the climate problems—I even recycle. I would like Jesus to save us from those sins, but He's also talking about me and you. The problem's not just out there, but the problem's in here. For which of us has never hurt another person? Which of us has never made someone else cry? Which of us has never taken advantage of someone to get what we want? The question is: have we made any contribution to the problem? Where is the fire? Is it just out there or is it here as well?

It's not that we are all good or all bad, all black or all white—"be good for goodness sake"—but we are a strange mixture of both, all of us. Sin says we're not what we could be or even what we should be; that something is broken, something is not right. This baby Jesus, He grew up, and God on a number of occasions said of Him, "This is my son whom I'm well pleased". And he grew up to take what we deserve, to stand in for me, to set us free to become friends with God, to take away the consequences of turning our back on God. The Bible says we've all done that, and what He does is He takes some things off us. It says He washes away our sins; He bears them along with the shame and the guilt and the regret and the brokenness. He takes some things off us, but He also gives us some things: He gives us God's favor, He gives us God's forgiveness, God's face. He gives us a loving personal relationship with our maker who turns out to be our father, so we are loved and we are safe and we are saved. It's hard to take all that in, isn't it?

One of the good things about coming to church at our church on a Sunday morning—it doesn't happen in all churches—is we have a communion service later on, and that gives you a chance to think a little bit about not just the baby who was born but His destination and what that means for Him and for us. My daughter has taught herself how to solve the Rubik's cube. Well, she didn't really teach herself; her sister-in-law taught her—I've got so many brainy people in my family that they can just do that sort of thing. But it's funny, you know: here's the Rubik's cube; why do we have an obsession with the Rubik's cube? Why is it that we feel like we've got to solve it all the time? Why can't we leave it messed up?

The reason I would suggest to you is because we've got a God-given desire for order and design and beauty. We don't like things messed up; we want things to be in their right place; we need for them to be where they belong. But you know, we also live in a messed up and broken world, and our lives are also messed up, and our relationship with God is messed up, and we're powerless to fix it. But that is what we celebrate at this time of year: God sends His son Jesus into the world. Jesus—the name means He will save His people from their sins. He'll put the things where they should be; He'll fix the things up that are broken; He'll restore the relationship. I want to suggest to you: don't let another Christmas go by without fixing this up, without fixing this up with Him, without getting that in order. You may or may not be able to solve the Rubik's Cube, but this is something that He can solve for us.

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