A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Feast of the Circumcision and Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, also New Year’s Day, January 1, 2012.
Claim the Name
Readings Appointed
(Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 2:21)
With New Year’s Day falling on a Sunday this year, our Trinity family is given the opportunity to celebrate not only the beginning of the new civil calendar year but also the Eighth Day of Christmas which is kept as the Feast of the Circumcision and the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I remember years ago being asked by a member why it’s so important that we remember Jesus’ bris? Well, as several hymns and prayers for this day remind us, this event in our Lord’s just begun life in the flesh was all about the beginning of His fulfilling of the Law of God on our behalf, submitting Himself to its requirements, even to the point of shedding His infant blood to do so. And through this act of submission to the Law, Jesus begins the work of living up to the Name that He was also given on this day to bear for us—Jesus: the Lord saves.
What happened to Jesus on that day was a sign of the great work that He was beginning to accomplish, even as a newborn infant, for us and for our salvation. And this is what makes this day important for us. Jesus’ circumcision was the moment where He was welcomed into the family of the People of Israel and given a name to claim His place among the ranks of this people. And what this means for us is that God is here to do a great work for us and for all who believe in Him—that we too have been given a name and a place among the people He claims to be His own forever.
Like Jesus, none of us really had much choice in the name we were given when we were born and brought into the families that our God blessed us with. Some of us were given names with great meanings or with long family stories and traditions attached to them. Others of us may have been given names that simply fit into the times and trends we were born into. And still others may have just gotten a name that simply filled in the blank on our birth certificate. But, no matter how we got our name, we have just had to live up to it so that we might be able to claim it and make it our own.
Yet, as we apply what happened to our Blessed Redeemer on this day to ourselves and to our lives that we live with our God by faith, we come to an interesting discovery. When our God calls each of us to be His own, it is He who lays claim on us by claiming each of us by name with His Name. This is what we understand when we heard God giving the great Aaronic Benediction to Moses to pass on to the priests who would serve the People of Israel. As the priests blessed the people, they did so using the Lord’s own Divine Name so that through this blessing God Himself “would put His Name on them”, thus showing them to be His very own, marked with His Holy Name.
Our God’s Divine Name still is placed on the people He calls to be His own. Each time our God blesses us, sending us out from this place into the world, He marks us with His Name, assuring us that we are indeed His own. Yet, our God has also done so much more. In the waters of Holy Baptism, our God not only marked us with His Divine Name, but He also made each of us to share in His very life, causing His life to become our life and making us His very own forever. His Name laid claim on us as He forgave us our sins and gave us the blessings of eternal life and everlasting salvation that belong to those who are His children and heirs of His kingdom.
Because our God has claimed us with His Name, this means that He claims us to live up to that Name. Marked with His own Name, God looks to us to live that Name in our lives. Our Lord Jesus lived up to the Name He was given as He lived, died, and rose again for us and our salvation. As we bear God’s Name given in the waters of Baptism, and as we bear Christ’s Name as our profession of faith in the world as Christians, we are called to show the world why we bear those Names. Our lives should be witnesses to the world of the One whose Name we bear and of the One who lives in each of us by faith.
Unfortunately, we all know how often we fail to live out in our lives what it means to be a child of God who has been claimed by His Name. Yet, there is still good news. Each time we fall short of living out the glorious privilege of showing ourselves as God’s children by doing those things that displease our Heavenly Father, sully the Name of His Son, and fail to let the Holy Spirit shine through our thoughts, words, and deeds, we have the right still to lay hold of that Blessed Name which claimed us as the Lord’s own. We reach out and claim that “only Name given under heaven by which we must be saved” and hold on to it as what it truly is: our Hope, our Life, and our Salvation before our God. Claiming that Name of Jesus, God looks on us and covers us with the righteousness His Son won for us. And through God’s righteousness and forgiveness, we are free to live as God’s own, just as He created us to be.
As we enter into this New Year under God’s grace, we are reminded that we are a people who have been claimed by God’s Name and who claim God’s Name as the very source of our life, our peace, and our hope. In the days to come, may we all live in and by the Name of our Salvation, trusting in the life that we have received from our Savior and living the life that He, by His grace, empowers us to live. Thanks be to Christ! Amen!
