Jesus asked, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Dear Redeemed of God, God has a name! And it is that name by which you are saved.

Now, God had revealed His name once before. While the people of Israel were still in bondage in Egypt, it was to Moses that God appeared in a burning bush, telling him that he was going to free his people from Egypt. Moses complained, “The people aren’t going to believe me if I tell them that ‘the God of your Fathers’ has sent me to you. Whom shall I say sent me?” God replied, “Ehiya esher ehiya.” From that is derived God’s proper name used but seldom translated in the Old Testament: Yahweh—the Existing One, the One Who is.

People throughout the ages were given names that included this proper name of God: Elijah, meaning my God is Yahweh; Abijah, meaning my father is Yahweh; Jonathan, meaning the gift of Yahweh; Jeremiah, meaning whom Yahweh has appointed; Hezekiah, meaning the might of Yahweh; Obadiah, meaning servant of Yahweh; Zechariah, meaning Yahweh remembers; Zephaniah, meaning hidden by Yahweh. The funny thing is that, outside of an occasional sermon or Bible study, hardly anyone ever calls on God by this name, except in the names to which it is attached, especially this one: Joshua.

Eleven days ago, you sang this wonderful hymn about the heralding angels’ message to the shepherds in the field as Jesus was born:

Having closed the hymnal on that stanza, the Church now comes to the Fourth Day of Christmas, often observed as the feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs. As it turns out, the Gospel appointed for Holy Innocents is the same as the one appointed for the First Sunday after Christmas in Year A. In that text, you heard:

The Prince of Peace is “born that man no more may die,” and today is “celebrated” the deaths of the male children in Bethlehem two-years old and younger. Jesus’ birth and the celebration thereof is marked by slaughter, there is blood on His birth.

It should come as no surprise. Where Jesus is, there sinful man knows nothing but hate. Jesus comes that you may not die, and your Old Man wants to off Him, too, because He and the Life He comes to give are a threat to your way of life. So, there’s no use in thinking of yourself better or holier or more pious than Herod because you didn’t kill those innocents in Bethlehem, because you think you would welcome such a one as Jesus the infant where Herod did not. Would it be any different with adult Jesus? Maybe…maybe not.

And then, to make matters worse, God sent His Son and family into Egypt to escape the tyrant’s rage. Mary, Joseph, and the Christ-child uprooted from their home in Bethlehem, having just received the gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the sages, and high-tailed it off to the land of slavery. “Out of Egypt I called my Son,” was of little comfort for weeping Rachel who refused to be comforted because her son is no more. “God’s Son gets to live, but mine is killed in His stead. It just doesn’t seem fair; it isn’t right.” It’s little consolation, but it wasn’t Jesus’ time yet, even though He had just received burial spices from those sages.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us...”

It’s so easy this time of year to get caught up in the Christmas story as told by St. Luke, even if, because of how things are done here, you only hear it at the Lessons and Carols service or in the candlelight portion of last night’s service. Nevertheless, it is a prominent thought, even here, at this time of year. Pregnant Mary, no room in the inn, finding room in a stable, giving birth, manger, swaddling cloths, angels singing, shepherds wondering. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” (Luke 2:14) These are all great things, things to marvel over, things to rejoice about. “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:11)

But John gives a different perspective. He fills in the blanks that, as you read Luke, you might not realize are there. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word of God is God; practically inexplicable and wholly incomprehensible beyond what John says. There is another person to this Godhead, the Word, and He is God. He was there in the beginning; of course He was, since He is God.

I suppose you had to have been there, but if you were, that would have been noteworthy, too.

There was no temple; in fact, there were no structures at all. There were a bunch of plants and animals. It was paradise.

There were two trees of note. Beyond that, there was a man and his wife. And there was God.

Like I said, I suppose you had to have been there, but can you imagine what it must have been like? You could walk around without shame in a manner that would be shameful today. You would have lived in complete harmony with everyone there, all the animals—all of them, whether they are today plant eaters, meat eaters, or blood suckers—and even the environment. Like I said, it was perfect: the temperatures were bearable night and day in that manner that would today be considered shameful, and the weather was amazing all the time. Nothing was there to harm you, but all of it was perfectly beautiful symbiosis.

And, like I said, God was there. This is a part that may be a little more difficult to imagine. Moses declared, “[T]hey heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” (Genesis 3:8) There is every indication that that was a regular occurrence, but it is never described. Scripture confesses that God is spirit (cf. John 4:24), so what does it mean, what did it look like, when that spirit walked in the garden, making sound indicative of that activity? Nevertheless, God was often with the man and his wife in Paradise. The fallen imagination of man can hardly comprehend the reality of God walking with the man and his wife in Paradise.