Sunday before Nativity 2024 Archbishop Alexander of Dallas

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.