Since I became a Christian I have always regretted not having a Saints name and though I could have added one at my Confirmation, as some do, it never occurred to me to do so.

However, painstaking research on my behalf, has revealed that there is indeed a Saint who bears my name – though in its Anglo-Saxon form of Ceolfrith (pr. Cold/frid).  He was an Abbot of the Anglo-Saxon double monastery of Jarrow/Wearmouth in the 7^th century and a leading figure in the church of his day and a friend of the great St. Cuthbert.  Because I have a great interest in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Christianity, it is therefore gratifying to know that I have lent my name to such an important Saint.

Christian names are often repeated in successive generations – the Americans are particularly fond of this so you get Harland Junior and even Harland the Third.  We do much the same thing with Kings and Queen’s! 

In the Jewish tradition this is particularly true so that when Elizabeth decided to call her new baby John there was a protest – none of your relatives have this name – and, in a moment of pure sexism, they turned to the father – the temporarily dumbstruck Zechariah – who called for a writing tablet and wrote – His name is John.  So our patron saint received a name which means God is gracious.   Both Elizabeth and Zechariah knew just how gracious God had been to them for Elizabeth had been unable to bear children and John was truly a gift from God.

A gift, of course, with a purpose.  Like Samuel in the Old Testament who was also a gift to the barren Hannah, his was a life that would be totally dedicated to the service of God.  And what a service he would give?   It would end with his own death in that terrible moment when Herodias and her daughter wreaked their revenge on him for disputing the legality of her marriage to King Herod.  By then John’s work was over and he had lived up to his name which was no longer about God being gracious to Elizabeth and Zechariah but much more about God being gracious to us in the gift of Jesus.  It was John’s dedication to Jesus that marks him out as truly God’s servant.

John the Baptist is known as the Forerunner because his purpose was, as he himself preached, to prepare the Way of the Lord.  He set out his own credentials as he  came out of the wilderness to herald our Lord’s  ministry –

The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.

 John was later to say of himself and of Jesus –

He must increase but I must decrease.

An amazing humility! And a message to all of us.

This message is that no matter who we are or what our Name is – there is only One Name which brings salvation – Jesus Himself – and Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah sent from God to call us into His eternal Kingdom.  Whatever names we were given at our birth and our baptism, the one name we hold in common is actually the title of the Holy One of God  - For Jesus is the Christ and we are Christians – proud to bear that name.  Like John the Baptist we are all called to proclaim Him as the Saviour not just of each of us personally but of the World.  We are called to act and live in the power of the name of God.

When the books of the New Testament were chosen by the Church, one book – The Shepherd of Hermas- was finally rejected though it was a close run thing because many in the early Church saw it as a valuable and important work.  In it we read these words:

The name of the Son of God is great and boundless and upholds the entire universe.

Here, in a nutshell, is a testimony to the power of Jesus to save the world and significantly, it is His Name which is a symbol of that power.  We use the Name of Jesus and indeed of the Trinity often is a blasé and casual way.  It is a formula we say at the end of almost every prayer and psalm but it can become just that – a set of words we simply recite parrot fashion.  Yet, in truth, we are uttering the most powerful words in Christianity when we invoke the Name of Jesus Christ

 In Old Testament thinking there is a link between a person’s name and his or her soul.  It was thought that one’s whole personality, with all its energy and uniqueness, was present in one’s name.  Therefore to know a person’s name is to be given insight into who they are as people. 

In the famous encounter which Jacob had with the mysterious stranger, in Genesis 32, at the ford of Jabbock, Jacob wrestles all night with him and demands to know His Name.  In that way Jacob would not only have insight of him but would, in fact, enter into a new relationship with him.  In the end God refused  to explicitly give his name but he changed Jacob’s to Israel.  Though Jacob carried on pleading to know his name he gave only the clue that Jacob had striven with God and with humans and had prevailed.  It was then that Jacob recognized with whom he had wrestled because he named the place Penuel – a name which means God’s face ­for as Jacob said –

I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.

God’s refusal to Name himself to Jacob led to the tradition in the Old Testament – continued today in Judaism – that God’s name is not spoken.  I once had an example of this when, a few years ago, I sought a reference on a would-be Ordinand from a friend who knew him well.  When it arrived I was surprised to see that throughout it a word was typed with a capital G then an hyphen and then a small ‘d’.  My first assumption was that there was something wrong with the typewriter but when I learned that the writer was a Jew, I realised that she could not type the word ‘God’.  For a time, even Christian Bibles avoided this.  The four Hebrew Letters which represent the name of God form the word Yahweh and this is commonly used in Bible translations today but in the early translations the Greek Kyrios meaning ‘Lord’ was used instead.  This gets a little confusing because Lord not only refers to God the Father but also to Jesus.  And yet the title of God is there in the title of Jesus for in Jesus God reveals himself totally and gives us His Name.

In the birth of Jesus God announces that He is Emmanuel which means God is with us. This tells us that the Incarnation is God’s action of coming to dwell amongst us and through the message of Gabriel to Mary he tells us that His Name is Jesus.  The name Jesus is an Aramaic version of the Hebrew Yeshua or Joshua and it means salvation.  In telling Mary the name of the child she would bear God is also telling her what he would do – He would be the Saviour of the World. 

His name is also his purpose and herein lies its power because God is present and active in Jesus and in His name.  When we  call upon the Name of Jesus and when we live in the power of Jesus we are both being saved and also sharing in the salvation of the world – which is the mission both of Christians and of the Church.  Kallistos Ware, a bishop in the Easter Orthodox Church has written that to

attentively and deliberately invoke God’s name is to place oneself in His presence, to open oneself to his energy and to offer oneself as an instrument and a living sacrifice in His hands.

When we call upon the Name of Jesus – when we make our prayers in His Name, we are placing ourselves in God’s presence which is why we should never say the words Through Jesus Christ our Lord, and their equivalent prayer-endings, lightly because we truly are uttering the Name of God and stand before Him. We also join ourselves to Him as his workers on earth for the world’s salvation.  Whilst we ask for things in our Lord’s Name and hope that by invoking Jesus at the end of our prayers, he will grant our requests, we are also asking Jesus to join himself with us, to pray within us - to become so much a part of our lives that we reflect him and mirror him in our lives.

The great Russian novelist, Dostoevsky, once wrote that The soul is mirrored in the eyes and it is when we truly look at Jesus that we see God – and when Jesus looks at us, he sees us as we really are, God’s children.  The great thing is – the more we look at him, the more we become like him.  Our soul is penetrated by his. 

One of the greatest prayers in Christendom is known as the Jesus Prayer. It goes like this:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, have mercy on me.

It is a prayer whose power is revealed by a quiet saying and a frequent repeating and those who pray it constantly find that it forms a rhythm in the soul which keeps us anchored to Christ.  By praying it carefully, we look, as it were, into the face of Christ and He looks into our souls. In that looking he changes us.

You will remember that moment in the courtyard of the high priest when Peter denied Jesus three times.  At that moment, Jesus is brought out by the soldiers and he turned and looked at Peter and Peter, seeing that look, wept bitterly.  In that look, Jesus reached into Peter’s soul and, despite the awfulness of the moment (or perhaps because of it), Peter’s soul was saved.  His tears were his repentance as he turned back his life towards the god he had denied.

So for us the Name of Jesus is the most powerful Name we shall ever utter because in the Name is the person and that person is God who engages with us in a relationship of love which brings our salvation.  God reveals Himself to us so that he may  love and save us – and that is awesome!

Christians must always approach God with awe and with deep humility because He has chosen to dwell with us.  Because of this we must always approach each other with reverence and the utmost respect and love because if God is with us, within us, then in each other we are meeting with God.  If we remember that and act accordingly it will transform our relationships with each other and will transform the Church and the World.

John the Baptist wanted only to show the world Jesus. He lived up to His name. In him the graciousness of God was revealed.  We are called to live up to the Name of Jesus – and know Him as Saviour, rejoicing in our common salvation and in our Lord’s Name, prepare the way for others to meet Him and be saved too.  That would gladden our Patron Saint’s heart.