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January 1, 2006 - Christmas 1, Feast of the Holy Name

"After eight days had past, it was time to circumcise the child;
and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel
before he was conceived."

Today
as I was reminded at midnight last night with fireworks exploding and tin cans rattling
is New Years Day.
But it's also
the eighth day of Christmas, a day also known as
the Feast of the Holy Name, or, more traditionally,
The Naming and Circumcision
of Jesus.

We're more squeamish nowadays, so we leave out the circumcision part
and focus on the naming.
But the gospel of Luke reminds us that both happened: On this day, eight days after he was born, Jesus the tiny baby
was named and circumcised.

There was nothing particularly special about this event. There were no angels, no bright star. It was just what happened — and still happens in many communities — to every little Jewish boy
on the eighth day after he was born.
It goes back to the time of Abraham.
Abraham
was ninety-nine years old. He'd already left his hometown, taken his household
across the desert
based on the command
of God.
And then God appeared to him again,
gave him a new name, and promised him descendants too innumerous to count
and a land they could call their own.
From that time on,
God will be Abraham's God, and the God of Abraham's descendants,
and Abraham and his descendants
would be God's special
chosen
people.

And then God said
that the sign of this promise, this covenant,
this formal relationship
would be
that all males
would be circumcised
at the age of eight days
a reminder
of the commitment
that God had made to them
and they had made to God.
It was an outward and visible sign
of an inward
and invisible
grace.

And so it was that Abraham and all the men of his family
and his servants and slaves as well
were circumcised
and so were all the boy babies
generation after generation after generation
as a sign that they were chosen
and belonged to God.

Fast forward two thousand years, given or take a couple of hundred years.
The covenant was still in force. The people were still in the land, although it was under foreign rule.
There were thousands and thousands of them that could trace their ancestry to Abraham.
And God was still their God
and they were still God's people.
And so the tradition of circumcision and naming
still took
on the eighth day
after a male child was born.

And in time
Jesus was born,
and like every other Jewish boy child
he was circumcised
when he was eight days old.

And Christians in the early church
those first few years, while Jesus was alive
and then after he had died and risen again,
those first few years
they continued to circumcise their boy children,
as a sign of the relationship
they had with God.

But it wasn't long before people began to ask questions. This was all very fine
for those who came from a Jewish background — they were already circumcised. But as the Christian message spread further and further, people were converted
who weren't Jewish. Did they have to be circumcised too, even as adults?
There were long debates — lots of them — we have the records of them in some of the books of the New Testament.
Eventually they came to the conclusion
that in the end
it didn't matter whether someone was circumcised or not.
That was just an external sign. What mattered
was what was inside. What mattered
was faith.

But there was something else going on as well.
Because Christians
had another ritual.
When Jesus was a young man, his cousin John
began baptizing people
in the Jordan River.
And Jesus picked up on this, and commanded his followers, in his final words at the end of the gospel of Matthew
to baptize those who followed.
Baptism became
the sign of the covenant,
the new sign
of belonging to God
for anyone
who followed Jesus.
At first it was only adults who were baptized,
because in the early days
they only discovered Jesus
later in life.
But as the church began to grow
whole families were converted
and were baptized all at once together,
parents, children, grandparents, servants, slaves,
everyone,
the whole household
taking on
the sign
of the covenant.
And of course all new members of that household from then on would be baptized, and that included babies.
And so what happened
was that baptism
came to be
pretty much the Christian equivalent
of circumcision,
a public sign
of the relationship
between God and his people.

And so in the baptism service
we use oil
to mark the cross on the foreheads of those who are baptized,
we mark them as Christ's own
for ever.

But just like
circumcision,
baptism
is an outward and visible sign
of an inward and invisible grace.
What really matters
is what is inside.
What really matters
is faith.

It's obvious
that our three babies today
are simply not old enough
to have developed their own faith.
But we baptize them
in anticipation,
trusting
that as they grow,
with the guidance of their parents and godparents
and with the support of the whole church
to have faith,
to understand
that God is their God
and that they belong to God.

And that's what we affirm
each time we as adults
witness a baptism, each time we as adults
join together in renewing our own baptismal voes
in the words of the baptismal covenant.
We are saying again
that God is our God
and we are God's people,
that we belong
to God.
And what that means
is that we are committing ourselves,
offering ourselves,
to God.

Because that's what baptism
and circumcision
have in common.
A recognition
of the relationship we have with God
as members of the people of God.
An act of commitment
to be part of this people of God, to be known as belonging to God,
to live a life
dedicated to God.

And what that life looks like
is maybe best explained
in music.

There's a traditional hymn, Take my life and let it be.

Take my life, and let it be
consecrated, Lord, to thee;
take my moments and my days,
let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands, and let them move
at the impulse of thy love;
take my feet, and let them be
swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my voice, and let me sing
always, only, for my King;
take my lips, and let them be
filled with messages from thee.

Take my silver and my gold,
not a mite would I withhold;
take my intellect, and use
every power as thou shalt choose.

Take my will and make it thine;
it shall be no longer mine.
take my heart, it is thine own;
it shall be thy royal throne.

Take my love; my Lord, I pour
at thy feet its treasure store;
take my self, and I will be
ever, only, all for thee.

We ask God to take our lives — time, hands and feet, voices, money and possessions, intellect, will, heart, love, self — to take the whole of us,
to love us, to bless us, to work through us.

But we don't only hear it in nineteenth century hymns. Ever since I went to U2 at the MCI Center in Washington DC in October, I've had one of their songs on my mind. It's called Yahweh, the Hebrew name
for God.

Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes and make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt and make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul and make it sing, sing
Take these hands
Teach them how to carry
Take these hands, don't make a fist, no
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth, give it a kiss
Take this heart
And make it break

Take these shoes, shirt, soul, hands, mouth, heart.
Take them, God,
love them, bless them, work through them.

Or again, in the traditional language of another hymn,
"What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart."

Baptism
like circumcision
is an outward sign
of our belonging to God.
As we baptize these three children, Eavan, Jaidyn and Alex,
we mark them
as belonging to God.

And we say to God
take them, love them, bless them, work through them,
just as we say to God ourselves,
take us, love us, bless us, work through us.
We belong to you.

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2006