Hello. My Name Is ...

​A Reflection on the First Reading for Sunday, December 1st, 2024:
First Sunday of Advent

---

Jeremiah
​33.14-16

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

​Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Until I started preparing this reflection, I’d never really thought about just how many names  and titles get tossed around in Advent. There’s a good deal of “Hail this” and “I will call you that” and “I am this thing over here.”

In the Annunciation, we read “the virgin’s name was Mary,” quickly followed by her being addressed by Gabriel as “favoured one.” Then to top it off, Mary says, “I am the servant/handmaid .…” Then of Jesus we get, well, the name “Jesus” (which means God saves), who will be called both Son of God and Son of the Most High. Joseph is told Jesus will be Emmanuel (God with us). Later we learn that John the Baptist is called John (graced by God), who then calls himself “the one who cries out in the wilderness.”

So, I was thinking about all these names – given and self-named – in relation to this reading from Jeremiah, when God tells us another name for our Messiah, the Righteous Branch of David. But what I like best about this passage is that we get a name. At last! Hello, my name is “the Lord is my righteousness.” That’s “Jehovah Tsidkenu,” to you. I know that this name applies to me because God is talking about the future Jerusalem. And the new Jerusalem is the Church, the Bride of the Lamb, in the Book of Revelation. So, when God names the new Jerusalem, he’s naming us! That’s me! 

When God gives a name, it’s not just a word attached to a thing, the way we name our cars or houseplants or Halloween decorations (not that we don’t love you, Rickety Rackety). When God gives a name, that name is that person’s existence, their action, their essence, their entirety. “The given name determines not only the person's character but also his fate,” says a Jewish genealogy website, “and the name therefore takes on a highly charged symbolic value.” When Gabriel (God is my strength) tells Mary that she will name her Son “God saves,” she at once knows that she is giving birth to the saving God. Jesus is our salvation. God the Father is “I am”. So, when we get a name, we have to sit up. Our name is I am “the Lord is my righteousness” (or “my justice,” in other translations.)

All of this makes me feel more able to enter the Advent “theodrama” (as Bishop Robert Barron calls it) of Advent. Amid all these names and the stories we know so well, the plastic figurines, and songs, I never remember to ask, “Where am I in all this?” So, it’s thoughtful of the Church, right in the First Reading of the first Sunday of Advent, to say, “Here you are.” You are Jehovah Tsidkenu, the embodied destiny of the man or woman who clings to God as the foundation of your uprightness.

I challenge myself (and you can join me if you like) to find myself, as I have been named, in all of the Gospel readings throughout this holy month. When the crowds flock to the riverbanks to get baptized, where is Jehovah Tsidkenu? As Elizabeth greets Mary at her home, what is Jehovah Tsidkenu up to? I’ve been given my name, my essence. Now, what am I going to do with it?

​

Kate Mosher

---