 |
snyeve04
Another Year of
Grace
Text:
Luke 2:21
Date: New Year's Eve / Circumcision and Name of Jesus
12/31/04 www.cunter strike .ro
The
old 17 th century Slovak hymn has us sing tonight:
Now
greet the swiftly changing year
With
joy and penitence sincere.
Rejoice!
Rejoice! With thanks embrace
Another
year of grace. [HS98 837:1]
We
will be addressing some of the harder questions with regard to the
recent devastation caused by the great earthquake and tsunami in
Southeast Asia in more detail on Sunday. For tonight, however, you
may be questioning the whole idea of the grace of God in the face
of such a tragedy. Of course you may have been questioning it anyway
for comparatively smaller reasons already. We hope that you will
hear and understand, however, that it is the grace of God alone
that can not only make some sense of our tottering world but give
the only real hope.
Tonight
our attention is focused on the clock, the calendar and the “Hope
for Wisdom” Waterford crystal ball to drop at midnight in New York's
Times Square. The swiftly changing year elicits wishes of “Happy
New Year” all around. And what we mean by that, generally, is a
sort of pat on the back, a word of encouragement to let bygones
be bygones and to look forward to good luck on whatever comes next.
For all of us New Year's Eve is a time to remember what has passed,
treasuring the good memories and discarding the bad, resolved to
move forward, hope for the best, with new resolution to do better.
I suppose if a tear is shed it comes from memories of losses and
reverses, missed opportunities or blown ones, thoughts of what could
have been but never will be.
If
it were only that easy—that wishing for happiness would make it
so; that moving forward would make past troubles, fears and selfish
tomfoolery disappear from our memory banks. But it is not that easy.
There are too many variables, too many things beyond our control.
Like the giant tsunami that wiped out tens of thousands of souls
this past week, we are often reminded how many things threaten our
lives, everything from our health to our relationships, our bank
accounts, our reputation, our hope for the future. The one constant
in all the hopes and fears we may list tonight, however, is that
they are mainly in reference to me and mine.
We
heard again the message of the angel to Joseph commanding him to
give this Divine Child of Mary the name Jesus. On the eighth day
he did so as Saint Luke tells us in his Gospel: “At the end of eight
days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given
by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” [Luke 2:21 (ESV)].
As
we cannot say that Jesus was born on our December 25 th celebration
of his birth, so it is mere coincidence that the eighth-day festival
of the Name and Circumcision of Jesus should fall on our New Year's
Day. But thank God it does. For this Gospel serves to lift us out
of our selfish navel gazing and give us eyes of faith to see the
love of God that wipes out all our sins and failures and gives the
only hope that can give confidence for the facing of these days
and all the days to come.
On
the one hand the circumcision and naming of the Christ child were
his first infant steps in fulfilling the Law of God for us and our
salvation. For this purpose he came, that by his active obedience
to the Law of God he be thereby qualified to be the perfect, sinless
sacrifice for the sin of the world. But the rite of Jesus' circumcision
is more than that, more that just the first check mark on his messianic
To Do list, even as the holy baptism of a child is more than merely
a “cute” ceremony of dedication, a sort of spiritual insurance policy.
For the Lord's circumcision and naming is not as much about him
as it is about you. He was circumcised not for himself, but for
you.
St.
Paul says as much. “But when the fullness of time had come, God
sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem
those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption
as sons” [Galatians 4:4-5 (ESV)]. In other words, in his circumcision
Christ our Lord undergoes the knife of the Law in order to redeem
us from the curse of the Law and free us from its demands, to give
us the inheritance and right to be called children of God. Forgiveness
and redemption does not happen but by the shedding of blood. Here
our Lord first sheds and pours out the New Testament in his blood.
These few drops of blood, however, points us forward to his last
will and testament, the shedding of his blood on the cross and the
| |
