The Circumcision and Name of Jesus + Luke 2:21 + January 1, 2017
Order of Holy Communion - Pg. 15
Hymn # 125 The Old Year Now hath Passed AwayIntroit
O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him? (Psalm 8:1, 4)
You, O Lord, are our Father;
Our Redeemer from everlasting is Your name.
O Lord, why have You made us stray from Your ways, and hardened our heart from Your fear?
Return for Your servants’ sake, the tribes of Your inheritance.
Your holy people have possessed it but a little while;
Our adversaries have trodden down Your sanctuary.
We have become like those of old, over whom You never ruled,
Those who were never called by Your name. (Isaiah 63:16b-19)
O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the | earth,
Who have set Your glory above | the | heavens!
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him? (Psalm 8:1, 4)
Collect for the Festival of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus
O Lord God, Who for our sakes hast made Thy blessed
Son, our Savior, subject to the Law and caused Him to endure the circumcision
of the flesh, grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit that our hearts may
be pure from all sinful desires and lusts; through the same Jesus Christ, Thy
Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one
God, world without end. Amen.
Collect for the New YearAlmighty God, our Heavenly Father, we give Thee humble and hearty thanks that Thou hast preserved us during the past year from all evil, and bestowed upon us all manner of good, and dost now permit us to enter into a new year; and we pray that it may please Thee mercifully to crown the same with Thy goodness, to bless us and our households with Thy heavenly gifts, and to grant and preserve unto us whatsoever is necessary for our bodily wants, to avert from us all calamities and evils, and to make this to be unto us a blessed, peaceful, and happy year; for the sake of Jesus Christ, Thy dear Son, our only Savior, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Readings
Sermon on the Holy Gospel and Epistle Lessons
Grace
and Peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1) On
the eight day of Christmas the child of Mary is circumcised and given the name
Jesus, the name given to Mary and Joseph before His conception. The
circumcision of Jesus is much more than a bland historical event with no real
importantanc. This is one of the most
important days in the life of Jesus for us. By being circumcised on the eighth
day, the child of Mary is incorporated into the children of Israel. Already on
His eighth day He fulfills the requirement of the Divine Law. Not only does He
fulfill this one requirement though. By accepting circumcision according to the
Law, Christ becomes liable for the entire Law. St. Paul writes in Galatians 5:3
that “every man who becomes circumcised is
a debtor to keep the whole law.” Jesus places Himself under the Law so that
every commandment, every statute, and every ordinance becomes His responsibility.
The burden of complete holiness of heart, mind, body, and soul, is placed upon
the Christ child as His burden to bear. He accepts this burden willingly. Jesus
walks the way of Moses perfectly in the external things Moses commanded. Jesus
attended the required Feasts in Jerusalem, observed the Sabbath, didn’t trim
the corners of His beard and only ate that which the Lord told Israel to put in
their mouths. But that is the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees.
Christ fulfilled the Law by perfectly walking in love for God His Father with
all His heart, soul, and strength. Christ truly loved His neighbor as He loved
Himself. The Law says in Leviticus 11:45, “You
shall be holy, for I am holy” and Jesus says, “Alright. Holy then I will
be.” By being circumcised on the eighth day Jesus fulfills the Law in one point
and shoulders the burden of the Law in every point externally according to the mode
of life, and internally according the heart.
2) And
what is the purpose of Christ’s walking in the way of Moses, fulfilling the
entirety of the Divine Law? By
doing the Law perfectly, externally as well as internally, Christ fulfills the
Law. He tells us so much in Matthew 5:17 when He says, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law
or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” And this
fulfillment of the Law is not for Himself, but accomplish our adoption as Sons
of God. Being children of those sinners Adam and Eve, we cannot fulfill the
Law. We could perhaps look like we fulfill the Law, but an external
righteousness is only that of the Scribes and Pharisees. We can never be holy
as God is holy because our hearts are by nature sinful and unclean. We could
never love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and strength, because we devote
our heart, soul, and strength to ourselves, our possessions and reputations,
and our selfish desires, making those things our gods. Christ fulfills the
Divine Law not for Himself, but for we who cannot, by nature, fulfill the
Divine Law in the least bit. Paul writes that “when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth
His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under
the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). He fulfills
the Law in every tiniest bit to free sinners from the curse of the Law which
condemns those who do not fulfill the Law themselves. It is as Paul tells the
Roman Christians, “For Christ is the end of the law for
righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4).
3) This is the point of the Epistle lesson appointed
for this Festival. Paul tells the Galatians, “Before faith came, we were
kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be
revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us Christ, that we might be
justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians
3:23-26). The Law was never meant to justify sinners and make men righteous.
The Law as given as a prison to confine all men in their sins, that is, to show
all men their sins and their sinfulness until the gospel was revealed. The Lord
never intended the Law to be the way that sinners gained God’s favor. Quite the
opposite. The Law was to be a tutor, not as we think of tutors today, but
tutors according to ancient Roman custom. A master would place his son under
the care of a tutor, who was usually a trustworthy slave in the household. The
tutor’s only job was to train the child in morals and right actions. This also
meant that is was the tutor’s responsibility to restrain the child from doing
wicked things by any means necessary. So it is for the Law. God places the Law
over all mankind as a tutor to restrain man’s inherent wickedness with the
threat of wrath and punishment. The Law tutors sinners in what is good and
right, though it gives them no power to do what is good and right, because
fulfilling the Law’s requirements can only be done when they are done from the
heart. So that Law is the tutor of mankind, to restrain our wickedness and show
us what is God’s will.
4) In the ancient Roman way of doing things, the
child was only to be under the tutor’s care for a period of time while the son
grew into maturity. The tutor was only a restraint. The tutor did not teach the
Son anything else. So it is with the Law, Paul says. It was our tutor,
restraining our sins and showing us our sins, but only until Christ was
revealed as the fulfillment and end of the Law. “Before faith came,
we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would
afterward be revealed.” When Christ comes onto the scene, beginning with
His circumcision, fulfilling the Law on our behalf, the faith is being
revealed. For faith in Christ justifies sinners and frees them from the demands
of the Law and its threats of wrath and punishment for failing to do the Law
from the heart. “Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us Christ, that we
might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a
tutor,” Paul writes. Faith in Christ’s merits and atoning death is what
justifies. The merit of Christ that we look to in faith is His life lived
perfectly and righteousness. Faith grasps Christ’s merit as our own and says, “Though
Christ did all that, He did it for me, so that all His righteousness and
goodness is mine.” Faith looks to the cross, the innocent, bitter sufferings
and death of Christ, and grasps that suffering and death and says, “All that is
done for me, to atone for my sins so that they are no more.” This faith
justifies us before God and makes us into Sons of God as Paul proclaims: “For
you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”
5) When
Christ came, He revealed the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins and the
righteousness of faith, so that for all who believe in Christ, the Law has no
power over their conscience. The Christian begins to fulfill the Law in this
life, though that doing of the Law is incomplete. Faith transforms the heart
and makes it new so that the Christian spontaneously begins to do good works of
love for neighbor, even as faith makes the heart love God with all one’s heart,
soul, and strength. But this does not mean that we are entirely free from the
Law in this life because we still live in the sinful flesh. The Law still makes
is demands upon our flesh. The Law still shows us our sins when we look into
the spotless mirror of the Ten Commandments, for there we see how we still fail
to love our neighbor as ourselves and how we fail to love God above all things
perfectly in this life. As long as we live in the flesh, the Law will daily
shows our sins of thought, word, and deed against God and neighbor. Even though
we, according to conscience, are free from the Law, the Law still rules over
our flesh as a tutor, restraining our sinful actions and condemning us for our
sins. According to our flesh we see that we are still “kept under guard by the law.” The Law still threatens us with punishment when we sin. The Law still
accuses us and condemns us because of our sins. The Law still humbles us and
leads us to acknowledge our sins. When this happens to us and we experience
this in our hearts, we feel the time of the Law.
6) But what Paul says to the Galatians about the Law
applies to us in this way also: that when we feel our sins and the threat and
punishment of the Law, it is simply doing its job to bring us to Christ. “Before
faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would
afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us Christ, that
we might be justified by faith. The Law still
does its work in our hearts and minds, but that work always should lead us to
Christ, not to despair of our sins and not towards feelings of
self-righteousness against the Law. When our sins accuse us and Law presses
down heavy on our hearts, it is pointing us to the Faith revealed: the gospel
that in Christ, all the Law’s demands have been fulfilled so that we free of
them and that our sins of all who believe are forgiven. Luther wrote that when
we find ourselves in that time of the Law, crushed by the weight of our guilt,
we are look to Christ and experience the time of grace, and that these two times
happen in constant alternation. We daily feel the pangs of the Law and its
threats for our sins, so we ought to daily train ourselves so that when we
experience the Law’s threats, we know to turn to Christ and the gospel of the
righteousness of faith, that our hearts may be comforted by His fulfilling of
the Law in our place, and so that our consciences might be consoled by the
forgiveness of our sins.
7) All
this makes the circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day a great comfort to Christians.
Christ willingly goes under the knife, and thus under the entire Law, to
fulfill every drop of the Law. He does this so that by faith He might be the
end of the Law for you in your conscience. When the Law accuses you of your
sins, it is doing so to drive you to Christ, the One who fulfilled the entire
Law for you. When the time of the Law weighs heavy upon your soul, call to mind
the time of grace, the Gospel. Remember that the Law was not given to justify
you from your sins, but to show your sins and point you to Christ, so that by
faith in Him you receive the forgiveness of those sins and experience the end
of the Law’s accusations and threats. By faith you are no longer under the tutor,
but under Christ, and therefore you are children of the heavenly Father, “For you are all sons of God through faith in
Christ Jesus.” And if Sons, then heirs of all the heavenly blessings Christ
your brother earned for you, beginning with His work on the eight day. Amen
May the peace of God which
surpasses all human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in
Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.