What's in a Name?
In the Lord’s Prayer, when we pray, “Hallowed be thy name,” we’re speaking to God. We’re saying, “Let your name be considered holy, respected, and sacred, throughout the whole cosmos!” The funny thing is that “God” doesn’t have a name (that we know). Scripture does refer to the God we meet in Genesis as “YHWH,” which isn’t really a name (or if it was, we don’t know how to say the name…and maybe we shouldn’t even try.) God simply is. God is God. There is an ancient tradition of calling God, “LORD”; that’s a good substitute for “YHWH,” but so is “I AM.” I kind of like it that God doesn’t have a name. God remains bigger than any one name could contain.
But we as human beings like names, especially when we’re developing a relationship with someone else. We like to know what to call that person, instead of “Hey you.” It’s like this with God. “God who created the heavens and the earth” can seem a little aloof. As Christians we understand that we have come to know God more personally through the name of one who called God “father.” This is Jesus. For Christians this name is pretty special. I remember as a teenager, when my faith was becoming much more personal and real, we would, at church camp, sing a lot of songs about Jesus, and especially about the very name “Jesus.”
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus; there's just something about that name!
Master, Savior, Jesus, like the fragrance after the rain;
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, let all heaven and earth proclaim;
Kings and kingdoms will all pass away,
But there's something about that name! ~ Bill & Gloria Gaither, 1970
And…
Jesus, name above all names;
Beautiful Savior, Glorious Lord.
Emmanuel, God is with us;
Blessed Redeemer, Living Word. ~ Naida Hearn & Patricia Cain, 1974
It’s hard to imagine calling Jesus anything other than “Jesus,” as we say it in English today. But his name is pronounced differently throughout the world. Just think of “Jesús” as in Spanish with the “h” sound as the beginning and the accent on the second syllable. Here’s a few more versions from the world’s languages: Gesù, Xesús, Isa, Jésus, Jezus, Yesu, Chesús, Isus, and Íosa. Yet all of these are simply variants of the spelling of the name we get from the Greek Bible: Iēsous.
We have to go further back in time to see how much this name has changed. We first encounter this name in the book of Exodus as Yehoshua, who was an assistant to Moses. (We render this name as “Joshua” today in English.) Over time the name got shortened to Yeshua, and this is probably what Jesus’ family and friends called him. So, should we be calling Jesus “Yeshua”?
To answer that I think it’s best to know what the name Jesus actually means.
The first time the name appeared in English over 1200 years ago, it didn’t look anything like we’d expect. When gospels were first translated from Latin into English, “Jesus” actually appears as Hælend. This doesn’t look anything like the Latin Iesus. Why is that? Well, that’s because Hælend is a translation of the name’s meaning. Let’s go back to Yehoshua. What does this name mean? It basically means, “God delivers” or “God saves.” We hear this sense, when the angel speaks to Joseph about Mary, “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus (Yeshua), for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
In the first English Bible (slightly updated) this reads, “Name thou his name Hælend, forsooth he shall heal his folk from their sins.”
The name Hælend basically means “healer,” but it can also mean “deliver” or “savior.” And this isn’t a coincidence. The two English words “save” and “salve” come from the same Latin word meaning both “to deliver” and “to heal.” In the Greek New Testament the verb sozo means both “save” and “heal.” Salvation and healing have long been held together.
What our English-language ancestors did was ask, “What’s in a name?” They got to the heart of the name “Jesus” and called him that: healer (whole-maker). It’d be like every time a person named John or Jane walked in the room and people said, “Hey, Grace of God, how’s it going?” or if I walked into the room and people asked, “So, Who is like God?, how ya doin’?”
Whatever we call him, Jesus, Jesús, Yeshua, Healer, or Savior, knowing that “healing, wholeness, deliverance, liberation, and salvation” lie at the heart of who Jesus is, and what Jesus does, helps us know who God is and what God does. This draws us ever closer to knowing the name of God, the one to whom we pray when we say, “Our father in heaven, let your name be holy, whole and healing.”
May our every prayer be for the healing (saving) of the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.