Epiphany 2 –
Series C (January 17, 2016)
“New
Names” (Isaiah 62:1-5)
“You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your
land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in
Her, and your land Married.” In the
original Hebrew, Forsaken is “Azubah,” Desolate is “Shamamah,” My Delight Is in
Her is “Hephzibah,” and Married is “Beulah.”
Azubah. Shamamah. Hephzibah.
Beulah. Those are some unusual
names, names we don’t hear much anymore.
I doubt if you’ve heard anyone named by the first two, but perhaps you’ve
heard of the last two. Those remind me
of names that a southern belle may have been called during the Civil War.
There is a small town named Hephzibah in Georgia. Hepzibah Pyncheon is a chief character in the
1850 novel “The House of the Seven Gables” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. And while doing a bit of research, I learned
that in the Marvel comic book series “The X-Men” there is an alien by the name
of Hephzibah.
Some of you who have been on this earth for a
while may remember a radio and later a TV show called “The Beulah Show” featuring
an African American maid named Beulah. There
was also a famous gospel hymn written in the late 1800’s titled “Beulah Land”
which refers to heaven.
Two of those names are used in improbable ways in
the Bible. The mother of good king
Jehoshaphat was named “Azubah” … “Desolate” (1 Kings 22:42); while the mother
of evil king Manasseh (if not the most evil of all the kings of Judah) is the
one named “Hephzibah” … “My delight is in her” (2 Kings 21:1). Doesn’t seem fair that those particular queen
mothers received those specific names considering how each of their sons
turned out.
Azubah … Forsaken.
This is what the people of Judah and Jerusalem would be known as. Shamamah … Desolate. This is what their land would be called.
Forsaken.
Desolate. That’s quite a
reputation. In using these names, Isaiah
is telling the people what would soon happen to them. Because of their unfaithfulness to the Lord,
they would be taken away into captivity.
In those days, since it was thought that the gods had control over
certain lands and territories, it would appear as if the God of the Israelites
had forsaken them. They were no longer
in their own land. Not only that, their
land would appear to be Desolate. God
had abandoned them. Their homes were
left empty. Their fields and vineyards
abandoned. God’s House, the Temple, was
destroyed.
How would you like to be known by
these names? How would you like that to
be your reputation? Forsaken. Desolate.
This is certainly what we deserve.
We deserve to be forsaken every time we forsake God’s commandments. Like the Israelites, we commit spiritual
adultery every time we flirt with the gods we set up in our life other than the
Triune God … wealth, relationships, success, our job, sports, anything that we
make to be more of a priority than our relationship to God.
Our life sometimes seems like a desolate wasteland. We look for all kinds of things to fill our
lives with love and joy. Many of them
leave us feeling empty. They don’t
last. They don’t truly fulfill us. Trouble and temptation overwhelm us. We recognize the sin in our life, and we feel
far away from God and his love. Instead
of a burning torch of salvation, we feel as if our heart is a smoldering wick,
maybe already a pile of ashes.
The Lord promised restoration to his
people, to bring them back from their captivity. He kept that promise. And his promised restoration pointed to the
day when he would deliver the world from its captivity to sin in the death and
resurrection of the Only-begotten Son of God.
Those new names apply to all who receive his forgiveness and salvation
by faith.
Hephzibah … My Delight Is in
Her. Beulah … Married. God joins himself to his people as a bridegroom
marries his bride. It’s a relationship
of love, commitment, tender care, and sacrifice. Jesus seeks you out in your forsakenness,
your desolation. He embodies divine
love, in particular in the way in which he showed his love … by his willingness
to die for you. That’s love. That’s commitment. He wore a crown of thorns so that you are can
wear a crown of beauty, a royal diadem. The
crown that you wear is the righteousness of Christ, the brightness of God’s love
and saving grace for you. The glory that
is upon you is the glory of the cross, the glory of God’s forgiveness.
In Holy Baptism, you take the name of Jesus, the
Bridegroom of the Church. He is present
with you. The Holy Spirit fills you with
the life and love of God. The name of
the Triune God is placed upon you and you are given the new name of “Christian.” You become a member of the Church, the Bride
of Christ. And “as the bridegroom
rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”
It’s probably no coincidence that Jesus’ first
recorded miracle took place at a wedding.
Among other things, this signifies his affirmation of marriage, and his blessing and presence in marriages. And because his
Church is his eternal Bride, it can also remind us of his presence for those of
you who have lost your spouse, whether through death or divorce. It can remind us of his presence for those of you
who have never been married.
But there’s more to it. This was not just a miracle for the sake of
showing off. It was not only to prove
his deity … which it does of course.
John says that this was “the first of his signs.” Jesus did miracles as signs. They were meant to point to something of
significance about himself. And what was
this “sign”? He turned water into wine. This is a sign that he is the promised
Messiah. The prophets foretold that
there would be wine aplenty in the Messianic age:
·
“On
this mountain the Lord of hosts
will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of
rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined” (Is. 25:6).
· “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to
the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price” (Is. 55:1).
· “The threshing floors shall be full of
grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil” (Joel 2:24).
· “And in that day the mountains shall
drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of
Judah shall flow with water; and a fountain shall come forth from the house of
the Lord” (Joel 3:18).
In this world on this side of the veil, there are
times when you will still feel like an Azubah … forsaken. This is especially true for those who have been
victims of abuse or adultery. There are
times when you may feel like a Shemamah … desolate. This is especially true for those who are lonely,
for those who have been the victims of unrequited love. This may also be true even in good
marriages. Let’s face it. Even the best of relationships go through
times of difficulty. When you put two sinners
together, there’s going to be conflict.
Remember that in Christ Jesus, you have a new
name. Hephzibah … My Delight is in
her. God delights in you. Beulah … Married. As a member of the Holy Christian Church by
baptism and by faith, you are a part of the Bride of Christ. Remember what a mystery this is. Not a mystery in the sense that we can’t
figure out what it means. A mystery in
the sense that only God can reveal its meaning to us. This is how he revealed it through the
Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5:
“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for
her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water
with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without
blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but
nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, for we are members
of his body. Therefore a man shall leave
his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one
flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and
the church” (Eph. 5:25-32).
Christ Jesus loves you. He gave himself up for you. You are made holy and cleansed. You are a member of his body. He holds fast to you. He promises to never let you go. Come to his table today where he nourishes
you, not with water turned to wine, but bread and wine wherein he gives you his
very own body and blood. Celebrate today
at this wedding feast, a foretaste of the feast to come where you will be
presented to himself in splendor and glory … because just as at that feast in
Cana, he has saved the best for last.
Amen.
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