Naming and Circumcision of Jesus
Numbers 6.22-27 Galatians 4.4-7 Luke 2.15-21
If you are a person who loves celebrating New Year, you might want to close your eyes and drift off for the next few minutes, because I have to confess that I don't enjoy it at all. After the wonder of Christmas I find the transition to a new year unsettling, even disturbing. The newspapers are full of reviews of the year just past, and seeing its events in that telescoped, concentrated format only seems to emphasise the dominant note of shock and bewilderment. There are those lists of the best plays and books and films of 2022, which leave me feeling guilty and frustrated at how much I've missed. And then of course there are the New Year Resolutions, that annual triumph of hope over experience.
No wonder we can find ourselves at New Year anxious about who we are and what lies ahead for us. That's why I'm glad that on the first of January the Church celebrates the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus – and that today, because New Year's Day falls on a Sunday, we have the chance to think about this often overlooked event in the life of Christ - which was, in its quiet way, a wonderful affirmation of his identity and purpose.
It's easy to forget that Jesus was quite a common name in first century Israel. It has the same root as the name Joshua and it literally means 'Yahweh helps'. So in one way this ceremony on the eighth day of Jesus' life was a sign of his full humanity –here was an ordinary boy with a good Hebrew name being received into his Jewish heritage in the usual way. Nothing remarkable at all.
But of course there was much more to it than that. In naming her baby, Mary and Joseph were honouring and accepting the charge given to Mary by the angel. 'You will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end'. What an extraordinary destiny to rest on one tiny child. He would embody the meaning of his name,'Yahweh helps', in a way never dreamt of before.
I thought it might encourage us this New Year's Day to see what the Bible says about our name, our identity, as Christians. The place to look is in the letters written by Paul and others to the first Christian communities, which are full of the most magnificent statements about who we are in the sight of God. There's one in the passage from Galatians that we heard earlier: 'You are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then an heir through God'. Then there's this, from 2 Corinthians, 'If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation…so we are ambassadors for Christ'. And best of all, here is Peter. 'You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.'
The most remarkable thing about these statements is that they don't say 'This is what you might be one day if you put all your effort into it and strive very hard to please God'. No, they say, 'This is what you already are, this is how God sees you and this is his purpose for you'. You don't have to do anything except, like Mary, say yes and be willing to receive God's grace.
Over the past few weeks I have been reading a book by Paul Swann. Paul is an Anglican priest who used to be vicar of a thriving church in Worcester, until out of the blue he collapsed and was eventually diagnosed with chronic fatigue. His book is the story of his recovery from illness and the transformation of his ministry as he discovered his true identity in Christ. 'One day,' he writes, 'as I was struggling with low self-esteem and the battle to recover from the bleakest parts of my journey, I complained to God, 'This is too hard for me to do!' Swiftly and firmly, but with extreme gentleness, came the response, 'Is it too hard for you to be my beloved child?'
When we realise, as Paul came to realise, that we are not what we do, or what we own, or what other people think of us, but that we are known and loved unconditionally by the God who created us, then a space opens up within us where God's grace can break through, as it did in the lives of Mary and Joseph and the shepherds on the hillside. There is surely no better promise than that to carry us over the threshold of a new year.
Many years ago, when I was working at St James's Piccadilly in London, we sometimes used a lovely invitation to communion – 'Receive what is yours by grace. Become what you are'. My prayer for all of us at St Anne's in 2023 is that we might do just that – that through the mercy of God we may see and know ourselves as we truly are in the light of Christ, and that we may carry that light into the world's darkness.
Amen.