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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
As we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, eight days after the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary, when He was circumcised, He was called Jesus, the name given by the angel, both to the Virgin Mary, before He was conceived in her womb (Luke 1:31), and to His guardian Joseph, before he took the pregnant virgin as his wife (Matthew 1:21). So, eight days after we celebrate the birth of God into human flesh, we also celebrate the circumcision and naming of Jesus, though the Christian Church and the Lutheran tradition have varied over time as to whether they celebrated Jesus’s circumcision, His naming, or both His circumcision and His naming, as we do today. As we celebrate this festival today, we consider the theme “Jesus’s circumcision and naming and ours”.
To be sure, the Divinely-inspired evangelist St. Luke, as we heard, mentions Jesus’s circumcision only as the occasion of Jesus’s naming, and the Divinely-inspired St. Matthew, for all of his other Old Testament and Jewish emphases, does not mention Jesus’s circumcision at all but mentions only Jesus’s naming (Matthew 1:25; confer Meyer, TDNT 6:81-82). Abraham was “re‑named” when the covenant of circumcision was given (Genesis 17:1-14), but, other than the examples of the circumcisions of John the Baptizer and of Jesus and their angel-given names (Luke 1:13, 59‑63), there is no explicit Biblical connection between Jewish parents’ circumcising and naming baby boys. Yet, we certainly get the connection, for Christian parents formally name their children in Holy Baptism, which is, as it were, the New Testament successor to circumcision (Colossians 2:11-12).
Like other Jewish boys at their circumcisions, Jesus at His circumcision was brought into the covenant that God made with His people: God’s covenant to be their God and to give His people the Promised Land, as they walked before Him blameless. Jesus was to be subject to the will of God as expressed in His moral, ceremonial, and civil laws (Lenski, ad loc Luke 2:21, pp.139-140; Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Luke 2:21-40, p.61). All people, including you and me, are similarly subject to the will of God expressed in His moral law. We may be quick to identify the sins of the world—rampant lawlessness, legalized abortion, immoral sexuality, galling greed, salacious slander, and deep discontent—but we may slow to identify our own sins against those same latter seven Commandments, not to mention our own sins against the first three Commandments, such as our misusing God’s Name by cursing, swearing, using Satanic arts, lying or deceiving by His Name. All people, including you and me, are sinful by nature, and so we actually sin, and so, for both reasons, we are deserving of death here and now and torment in hell for eternity.
The Jews came to think wrongly that they were saved by their circumcision, whether or not they repented of their sinful nature and of all of their sin and trusted God to forgive them for the sake of the Savior Who was to come. God’s prophets called for more than a physical circumcision: the people were to have a change of also ears and hearts. You and I similarly may think wrongly that we are saved by our Baptisms, whether or not we repent of our sinful nature and of all of our sin and trust God to forgive us for the sake of the Savior Who has come. Our ears may tune-out God’s Word, or we may harden our hearts to His calls for the change in our behavior that should accompany our repentance and faith. Yet, when we are heartily sorry for and sincerely repent of our sinful nature and of all of our sins, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all of our sins, whatever those sins might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus, so-named at His circumcision because He would save His people from their sins. You see, the name “Jesus” is a form of the Old Testament name “Joshua”, the Hebrew of which means “the Lord saves”, and in Jesus the Lord saves in a way that the Lord did not save in Joshua.
Jesus’s identity as the Lord and His work of saving us from our sins are inseparably linked. On this Feast of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus, we do well to ponder that the Lord even could be circumcised. Jesus was just as human as any other eight-day-old boy! Though we may be too prudish to look, scholar Leo Steinberg in his 19‑83 book titled The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion suggested that artists from the mid-thirteenth to sixteenth centuries openly depicted the Baby Jesus’s genitals in order to confess the fullness of His incarnation. Of course, sinless Jesus had no reason to be ashamed (Genesis 3:7, 10), whether depicted naked and even nursing on His mother’s lap or actually naked hanging from the cross and maybe even rising from the tomb. The union of the Divine and human natures in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity was necessary for Jesus both to perfectly keep the law on behalf of humanity and to die for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. In being circumcised, Jesus is far more than an example of how we should keep the law. Rather, there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). As we heard in the Epistle Reading (Galatians 3:23-29), we are justified by faith in Christ. Out of God’s love, mercy, and grace, we who repent and believe receive both the righteousness of Jesus’s having kept the law that we fail to keep and the righteousness of Jesus’ having suffered for our failure to keep the law. The blood that Jesus would have shed arguably for us in His circumcision anticipates the blood the He shed for us on the cross and the blood that He gives to us in, with, and under the wine of the Sacrament of the Altar, just as the human flesh that was circumcised also hung on the cross and was raised from the tomb and is given to us in, with, and under the bread of the Sacrament of the Altar.
This past week as I prepared to preach on today’s Gospel Reading this morning, I was brought to a greater appreciation of how, for the Jews, circumcision separated them from the unclean world around them and eventually was understood as indicating both the extinguishing of sinful desires and the removal of sins (ESL #4059). For us, Holy Baptism similarly serves as an outward sign that we are Christians, but, more importantly, Holy Baptism is a sign of God’s will toward us for the purpose of awakening and confirming our faith (Augsburg Confession XIII:1). As the mark of circumcision at eight days served as the Lord’s “brand” on his men and eventually their families, and as He put His three-fold Name on them through the blessing given to Aaron, which we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Numbers 6:22-27), so Holy Baptism at eight days with its sign of the cross upon the forehead and upon the heart and its placing of the Triune Name in its threefold application of water marks the followers of the Christ (confer, for example, Revelation 14:1). So much is the Triune Name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit associated with the name of Jesus that the Book of Acts, for example, can refer to a Trinitarian Baptism as a baptism in the Name of Jesus (Acts 2:38; 10:48). The baptized who privately confess their sins to their pastor are likewise individually absolved in the Triune Name and admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, as, in the Old Testament, circumcised men and the women in their households partook of the Passover (Exodus 12:43-49). God’s holy Name is given to us and kept holy among us, as His Word is taught in its truth and purity and as we lead holy lives according to it. For example, we call upon God’s Name in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.
We have considered “Jesus’s circumcision and naming and ours”. Jesus’s circumcision and naming led to our being “circumcised”, as it were, and having God’s Name put upon us in Holy Baptism. In Him, we have peace and joy already now, and the sure and certain hope of the future resurrection and glorification of our bodies. As we sang in today’s Introit (Psalm 40:6-8; antiphon: v.16), we who seek the Lord rejoice and are glad in Him; we who love His salvation say continually, Great is the Lord!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +