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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.)
Happy New Calendar Year, and, more to our point of being here today, Blessed Feast of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus! The Church has long considered the start of the new Church Year to be the First Sunday in Advent, and apparently, before January 1 became the start of the new Calendar Year because of Jesus’s Naming, the Church for some time already had been observing the Feast of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus. Today’s one-verse Gospel Reading uniquely narrates Jesus’s Circumcision and Naming (confer Matthew 1:25), as St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account earlier had also uniquely narrated John the Baptizer’s Circumcision and Naming (Luke 1:59‑63). Those two narratives are said to provide the “chief evidence” that circumcisions and namings were connected (Plummer, ad loc Luke :1:21, p.62), though God Himself renamed Abram when God made His covenant of circumcision with Abram, not at the age of eight‑days but of ninety‑nine-years (Genesis 17:1-14; confer Leviticus 12:3; Philippians 3:5).
Fans of the television show Seinfeld may not be able to think about circumcision at all without thinking of the fifth‑season episode of the show titled “The Bris”, where Jerry and Elaine are made godparents to their friends’ newborn son, and so Elaine had to find a Mohel to conduct the Bris, and Jerry had to hold the eight-day-old boy during the circumcision. As you would expect, if you know the show, comedy ensues in typical Seinfeld-fashion, including the high‑strung Mohel’s accidentally “circumcising” one of Jerry’s fingers. Circumcision is hardly a laughing matter, though; after all, there was nearly a death in Moses’s family over a failure to circumcise one of his sons (Exodus 4:24-26).
Yet, circumcision can seem foolish to others, and circumcision can seem foolish even to us. Our fallen human reason might ask, why does that particular action bring a person under God’s covenant? Does the covenant mean only obligations, only blessings, or both? Or, maybe others and we take seriously God’s Word attached to the action and recognize circumcision for the religious ritual that it used to be, connected, as it was, to the promise of a Savior and the forgiveness of sins. The Jews in Jesus’s day certainly thought circumcision was important, but they wrongly thought of circumcision as an automatic and guaranteed entry into God’s Kingdom. Similarly, we might wrongly think of baptism, as an automatic and guaranteed entry into God’s Kingdom, as if our turning from sin, our trusting God to forgive our sin, and our wanting to stop sinning were not necessary in order for us to receive the benefits of the religious ritual.
To be sure, the people of the Old Testament and the people of the New Testament, including us, are sinful by nature. The corruption of original sin means that on our own each one of is unholy before God and hostile to Him. By nature, we are unable to truly fear, love, and trust in God, and we are full of evil inclinations. Our sinful nature leads us to commit countless, sometimes unspeakable, sins against God and against one another. Things that society does not even give a passing glance are glaringly wrong in God’s eyes. We think, say, and do things that we should not, and we fail to think, say, and do things that we should. On account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve both death here in time and torment in hell for eternity. However, as the Holy Spirit called and enabled the people of the Old Testament to repent, so the Holy Spirit calls and enables the people of the New Testament, including us, to repent. When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to stop sinning, then God does forgive us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin. God forgives our disregard for the ways that He works through His Means of Grace, or whatever our sin might be. Though those Means of Grace, we who repent receive God’s forgiveness for Jesus’s sake.
Today’s Gospel Reading recalls the angel Gabriel’s announcing Jesus’s birth to the Virgin Mary, telling her that she would call her Son’s Name “Jesus” and that He would be the Son of God, since the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her (Luke 1:26-38). All three Blessed Persons of the Holy Trinity were involved in the Incarnation, but only the Son of God was incarnate of the Virgin Mary. And, as the Circumcision reminds us, the Son of God was incarnate as a fully‑male human‑being. He was in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3), but He Himself had no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). He did not need to be circumcised, but He put Himself under the law and fulfilled the law for us and all people. He did not need to die, but He died on the cross for us and all people. Jesus’s circumcision was only His first shedding of blood for us. Out of God’s great love, Jesus died as our substitute, and then He rose from the dead, on what can be called the Eighth Day. He was named Jesus because He saves His people from their sin (Matthew 1:21). His Name, Person, and work are “inseparably linked” (Bietenhard, TDNT 5:271). As St. Peter told the Sanhedrin, there is no other Name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
The launching of ships is sometimes perhaps misleadingly called a “christening”, for example, “by breaking a sacrificial bottle of champagne over the bow as the ship is named aloud” (Wikipedia). Other religious traditions may “christen” and “name” people in something less than or other than Holy Baptism. Faithful Christians recognize that circumcision prophetically pointed to Holy Baptism and replaces it as the entrance rite into the Kingdom of God (confer Colossians 2:11-12). Others may regard it as foolishness, but God works through water and His Word to create faith, whether the person baptized is eight-days-old, eight‑years‑old, or eight‑decades‑old. We are named, and the Triune God’s Name is put upon us. After we confess the sins we know and feel in our hearts, we in Holy Absolution are absolved in that same Triune Name, and then we are admitted to the Holy Supper of Christ’s Body and Blood, just as those circumcised could eat of the Passover Meal (for example, Exodus 12:48-49). In all of these ways we who repent receive forgiveness of sins and so also life and salvation.
Truly, “We are blessed by Jesus’s Circumcision and Name”. In Christ we are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). We have peace and joy. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Galatians 3:23-29), we are baptized into Christ and are justified—that is, forgiven, saved—by faith. God’s order of creation remains, but, in His order of redemption, differences between us no longer matter. God graciously reveals Himself to us by Jesus’s Name, and we in turn call upon God in prayer in Jesus’s Name, and God hears and answers those prayers in the time and way that God knows to be best. In fact, in writing to the Colossians and to us, St. Paul says that whatever we do, in word or deed, we should do everything in the Name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him (Colossians 3:17).
Most times that we gather for Divine Service, we invoke God’s presence and recall our baptisms in the one Triune Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (confer Matthew 28:19). Before we leave the Divine Service, God’s Name is spoken over us three times in the Aaronic Benediction that we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Numbers 6:22-27), and at other times we hear the Trinitarian Apostolic Benediction (for example, 2 Corinthians 13:14). In between the Invocation and Benediction, to paraphrase today’s Psalm (Psalm 8; antiphon: v.9), we, even the mouths of babes and infants, praise God’s “majestic name”. That Divine Service cycle continues weekly, monthly, and yearly—both Church Years and Calendar Years—until the Lord’s coming in glory or our earthly deaths. Then, as most of our spiritual lives began with our Trinitarian Baptism, our earthly remains are laid to rest in the sure and certain hope that God the Father Who created our bodies, God the Son Who by His blood redeemed our bodies, and God the Holy Spirit Who by Holy Baptism sanctified our bodies to be His temple will keep them until and raise them up and glorify them on the Last Day (confer Lutheran Service Book: Agenda, 130).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +