Holy Name of Jesus 2012

The Holy Name of Jesus 2012 (Luke 2:15-22)
“He was called Jesus.”

Love and love alone is salvation.

Our Heavenly Father named his incarnate son Jesus. This is the name the archangel Gabriel announced to Holy Mother Mary at the moment of the incarnation.
The angel brought the Father’s message to the holy mother to name her son Jesus. Jesus means savior.

The people of that time looked for a savior. The Romans looked to the emperor to save them from political chaos. The Greeks looked to philosophers and scientists to save them from ignorance. The Jews looked to a messiah to save them from Roman imperialism and Greek polytheism.

The Romans feared political instability and so reacted by creating a immense and powerful imperial system.

The Greeks feared ignorance and so reacted by creating highly complex and diverse philosophies.

The Jews feared the loss of their identity and so reacted by creating rigid and restrictive religious systems to purify the people for the Messianic leader who would destroy the corrupting influences of Rome, Greece, and unrighteous Jews.

Each civilization felt a great and overwhelming fear. Each civilization attempted to express that fear in ways they could understand, manage and control. Each civilization drew back from the cause of that fear. The cause of that fear is separation from God. The outward and visible sign of separation is death.

Death is the fear that people do not want to name. It is beyond our control. It is beyond the influence of politics, philosophy or religion.

Jesus came to save all people everywhere from the power of death.

Jesus saves all people everywhere from death by making a real choice to embrace death on the cross. For every who has ever lived or will ever live the embrace of death is fearful and final. For Jesus, death is a distortion to be transformed.

Jesus just doesn’t conquer death or destroy death. Jesus saves the entire human species from death by willingly embracing death. The embrace of Jesus is the embrace of a love that is infinite and eternal. In that embrace Love transforms death back into life. In that embrace love transforms fear back into faith.

Jesus saves us from fear and death through Love. Only Jesus has this love because only Jesus is this love. Jesus is the co-eternal Beloved of God the Father who is love.

Jesus is the universal savior for all people because Jesus is the transcendent pattern by which the Father created all people.

Jesus is not only the source of life he is the meaning and purpose of life. God the Father creates every human being through God the Holy Spirit to be the unique and forever friend of God the Son, Jesus, the Beloved.

Jesus is the Father’s gift to all people everywhere. Jesus is a true gift and a real gift. Jesus came to earth as a helpless infant to reassure a fearful humanity that he holds in his sacred heart only grace and compassion.

There is no condemnation in Jesus because there is not condemnation in God. There is no condemnation in God because God just doesn’t have love- God is love.
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There is no compulsion in the universal savior. Jesus offers himself to us as the one pure holy gift of divine love and compassion. The active principle of love is choice.
Jesus offers salvation to all people everywhere with no condition and no restriction. Salvation is Jesus. Only Jesus has embraced sin and death and transformed it back into love and life. Only Jesus has faced fear, embraced fear and transformed fear back into faith.

The call to worship is the call to reunification with the Father, through the Son, by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

The call to worship is the universal invitation to all human beings everywhere to receive the gift of divine love and compassion, to find a new life in that love, and to be transformed by that love.

The call to worship is the name Gabriel delivered to Mary and Mary joyfully gave to her son. It is the name of love himself. Love and love alone is salvation.
The name of love is Jesus.