In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Fourteen of the names
that were read in the genealogy of our Lord were
kings. And what we got in those names before
and after and including the kings was not exactly
a history. but an encompassing in those names
of Israel. And Israel is very important. The
name, the people, and their connection to the
Christian message, obviously to our Lord, to
the meaning of His name, Emmanuel, God with us,
and to His church. Let me begin with the name
itself, Israel. Israel is a divinely given name.
If we go back to the grandson of Abraham, Jacob,
we find him in Genesis 32 in a lonely place.
He's running away from his brother whom he cheated
of his inheritance. And his brother understandably
wants to kill him. So he's on the lam. And as
he seeks to sleep in this lonely place, a man
appears to him and wrestles with him. And toward
morning they wrestle all night. The man says,
let me go. And Jacob says, I won't let you go
until you bless me. And the man blesses him and
says, what is your name? And Jacob replies, Jacob.
And the man says, you are no longer Jacob. Now
you are Israel. You have struggled, for you have
struggled with God and with man and have prevailed.
And Jacob says, bless me. And the man blesses
him. And Jacob said, what's your name? And the
man says, why do you want to know that? And goes
away before giving it. And Jacob finally concludes
the episode by saying, I have seen the face of
God and yet have survived. And he named the place
Peniel, which means God's face. Now the ancient
fathers universally read this episode as an appearance
of our Lord to Jacob. As they understood every
appearance of God in the Old Testament, from
the walking of God in the Garden of Eden, to
the revelation of God to Israel on Sinai, to
the appearance of God in the temple that Isaiah
saw, and Ezekiel's vision of the chariot of fire
in Babylon. Always it is our Lord. And on this
occasion, he gives the name that his people will
own ever after. And note, it is a personal name.
Israel means first the man Jacob, the patriarch.
But, and here is the important thing, It also
means the people that came out of him. The people
who bore the promise that God made to Abraham.
In you all nations of the world shall be blessed.
This is God's Israel that carries on the blessing
given to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. The
promises made to them. This is a people that
grows to a great nation. That has kings of whom
14 figured in today's Gospels. At least their
names. They were lousy kings, almost all of them.
Really bad. Even David, the next to best of them,
even David was an adulterer and a murderer. To
say nothing of someone like Manasseh, who was
the one who ordered Isaiah's son into. And that's
why the belief grew up when the kings were finally
done away with by the Babylonians. Why the belief
grew up that a king would come, that God would
send a Christ, an anointed one, who would perfectly
represent his will in the way the kings of Israel
never had. But for now I want to stress that
connection between Jacob and Israel and the fact
that the word Israel is always a personal name
and a collective name. At one and the same time
it is Jacob and the people that come out of him.
Because that is the root of the meaning of church.
What is the church? It is, as St. Paul tells
us, the body of the risen Christ. That body which,
because it is now animated, no longer by merely
a life force, as we all have, but by the very
Spirit of God. It has become a new creation in
which the laws of the old creation no longer
apply. It is the beginning of the world to come.
This body, risen body of Messiah into which we
are all incorporated. As we just saw this morning.
In the child clothed with light. The child clothed
with Christ. From among us. My grandniece actually.
And just like her. I am part of that body. As
are you. All you who are baptized. We are all.
He is our Emmanuel because indeed he is among
and in us. Through his church. And this comes
from Israel, this idea. And it's why St. Paul
refers at the end of Galatians to the church
as the Israel of God. Because it is once one
single person. who is Christ and the nation which
is his and in which we dwell and in which we
are. This is our nation, as the epistle says.
This is the city whose founder and builder was
God. The city which will endure the end of the
age. The city which will survive the end of the
universe. The city which is God's place. Which
in turn we are. To him be glory who has saved
us. and made us His own, with the Father and
the Spirit, forever. Amen.