The New Year forces you to think about time, how it’s always slipping away, and how you strive so desperately to hang onto it, not to waste it or lose it, that you too often fail to enjoy it or make use of it. Time itself, like the rest of creation, has been warped and burdened by the bondage and curse of sin. And the one thing that is certain for you and all of yours, as time keeps on ticking into the future, is that one day your time in this world will be up, and then you are going to die.
With each birthday that comes and goes, and with every year that passes, you know you’re that much closer to the grave. And as you grow older, you may become more desperate to hang onto the time you have, or else despair at the seeming futility of life. The parties and celebrations, such as many enjoyed (or tried to enjoy) last night, are often as not an attempted escape, or a pretense that everything is just fine. But in the light of day, most everyone knows better (or they should).
It hasn’t always been that way, not from the very beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. Nor did He intend for time to be a burden and a curse. It was — and by His grace, it still is — one of His many blessings, a significant part of His good creation, designed to give your life structure and purpose and meaning. The sun and moon and stars mark the days and years of a life and a world that God the Lord has given for you to enjoy in His gracious presence.
It is possible for you to live that way, by His grace, because the coming of Christ Jesus in the Flesh — His coming into this world of history and time — has restored God’s gift of time to its original purpose and blessing. Every minute that Christ our Savior lived as the true Man here on earth, from infancy to adulthood, from the womb to the tomb, was thus given the divine significance of God Himself. In Him every minute counts, no longer in desperation, but in the joy of real life.
And so it is that your time as a member of His Church has been redeemed and sanctified by Christ Jesus; indeed, your time already here and now is really the beginning of eternity with Him. Which means that you can mark the passing of time — not with sadness and regret for the past, nor with false hopes and your own resolutions for the future — but with confidence in your Savior.
Even so, we are not here today to celebrate the secular New Year. There’s nothing wrong with New Year’s celebrations, for Christ has redeemed such occasions by His grace, and you are free to enjoy the many good gifts that He bestows upon you in this body and life. But as a congregation of His Church, we celebrate Christ Jesus Himself, who He is and what He has done to save us. Only then, having celebrated Christ and His great Salvation, are we able to celebrate anything else.
In particular, the Holy Gospel appointed for this Eighth Day of Christmas has set before you the Name and Circumcision of Jesus, thus declaring God’s great love for you in the sending of His Son into the Flesh, born of the Woman under the Law, in order to redeem you for everlasting Life.
By faith in His Word, we recognize that, in the Circumcision of our Lord Jesus, God Himself was already submitting Himself to the demands of His own Law on behalf of all the children of men, accomplishing divine righteousness in His own Body of flesh and blood like yours, in order that you should be justified in Him and share in His divine, eternal Life. In fact, everything that Christ the Lord came to do was already underway and being established in His Circumcision.
There was, first all, His obedience to the Law on behalf of fallen man. As the sinless Son of God, our Lord did not require for Himself the promise and forgiveness of the Covenant. But He was obedient to the Law from the very first — and as He grew, He was obedient to His human parents in keeping with the Fourth Commandment — that He might obtain the righteousness of God for you and all people. Thus was He subjected to the Law of Circumcision in His own holy Flesh.
In this way, also, the Lord was at work to bring about the New Creation. For in His Circumcision there is already the first shedding of the Savior’s Blood — His Blood of the New Covenant — by which He makes Atonement for the sins of the whole world, and so also cleanses you of all sins.
Indeed, it was entirely appropriate that the obedience and suffering of Christ Jesus should begin with His Circumcision, since Circumcision was given to Abraham by the Lord God Himself as the sign and seal of His Covenant, a Sacrament of His Word. It was a tangible promise of the Savior who would come from the loins of Father Abraham. And so it was that, by His Circumcision, in His own Flesh and Blood as the Seed of Abraham, the Lord God fulfilled this sacred Covenant.
Leave it to the Lord to establish His Covenant in such a flesh-and-blood, painful, and embarrassing way! For this is how He loves to work, to reveal and give Himself to you in the most down-to-earth ways and means. As He created Adam out of dirt, and as He entered into His Creation by His conception and birth of the Woman, St. Mary, He gets right down into it with all of us on earth.
Not so different is the way that He promises truly marvelous things, but then lets you wait for what seems like forever — until it all seems lost and hopeless — before He does what He has spoken.
Consider the history of Circumcision: Abraham was ninety-nine years old, and after many years of promises from God, his time was running out. He was old, and he was tired. He was nervous and scared about the future. But just then, when it surely must have seemed as though it were already too late, the Lord God appears with yet another Word of promise. And such a Word it is!
Everything God says to Abraham seems ludicrous, like so much foolish nonsense! Cut off the foreskin from your genitals, and do the same with all the males of your household, and that will be My Covenant with you. And as for you, old man — your own body as good as dead, and your wife a barren old woman — you will yet become the father of countless children. Indeed, the day will soon be here when you must circumcise the son whom I have promised, a son of your own flesh and blood, conceived and born of your own wife according to My Word.
Such a Covenant as that is almost as hard to believe as the Words and promises of God concerning the waters of Baptism, that these are a gracious water of life, a rich and full washing away of sin; or the Absolution of a sinful human pastor, that by it your sins are forgiven before God in heaven, as by Christ your dear Lord Himself; or the tiny piece of bread and the little drink of wine in the Lord’s Supper, that these are His true Body and Blood, given and poured out for you.
Yet, as wild and crazy as the promise seemed, Abraham believed the Word of God, and he lived by faith in that Word of promise. And the Lord God was indeed faithful in doing all that He had spoken, in fulfilling His Covenant with Father Abraham. He gave to him a son in his old age; He multiplied his descendants; and when they were enslaved in the land of Egypt, He brought them out of bondage with a mighty, outstretched hand, and He confirmed His Covenant with them — by the blood of the Passover Lamb, and by the sacrificial blood of bulls and goats at Mount Sinai.
And finally, after many hundreds of years, when the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of the Woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary. And thus He came, the promised Seed of Abraham, conceived and born according to the Word and promise of God — born under the Law to redeem those who were under the Law — born to redeem you, that you might become a child of Abraham by faith; and even better, that you might be adopted as a son of God in Christ Jesus, your Lord.
Indeed, the Covenant Law of Circumcision was a tutor preparing for the Christ; and with His own Circumcision on the Eighth Day, His Flesh & Blood became the New Covenant, replacing the Old.
Now, for the Jews Circumcision on the eighth day was also the time when a newborn son would be named — just as “Abraham” himself was given that name, “the father of many nations,” when he received the Covenant of Circumcision. So also did the Christ then receive that Name which was given by the Lord to Mary and Joseph through the Archangel Gabriel. The Church therefore remembers and celebrates both the Name and the Circumcision of Jesus on this Holy Day.
This Name, Jesus, means “Yahweh Saves.” For He is born to save His people from their sins; and His Name is a confession of the Gospel, that in Him God is reconciling the world unto Himself.
Everything has been fundamentally changed, forever and for better, with the coming of this Son of God in His own human Flesh and Blood. Indeed, the entire history of the world and the daily passage of time have new and real meaning in Him, in His Body crucified and risen from the dead; no less so than the entire Old Testament has reached its true meaning and fulfillment in Him.
By way of one significant example, especially appropriate to this day and the occasion before us, the Old Testament Covenant of Circumcision has been fulfilled in Christ Jesus, in such a way that it has been forever replaced — for you and all believers, boys and girls alike, adults and children — with the New Testament Sacrament of Holy Baptism. So does St. Paul write to the Colossians, that “in Him you were also circumcised with a Circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the Circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in Baptism.”
So, too, it was in that washing of the water with His Word and Holy Spirit that God the Lord put His Name on you — the Holy Name of “Jesus.” For just as He received His saving Name at His Circumcision on the Eighth Day, so have you received His Name by your Baptism into His Cross and Resurrection. And His Name, “Jesus,” bestows on you the very Salvation He has won.
Consequently, each and every Sunday — on the “Eighth Day,” as the early Christians understood it to be — the people of God leave behind the cares and worries of the workaday world and the seven-day week, and in the Liturgy of the Gospel they enter with confidence and peace, with faith and thanksgiving, into the everlasting Life of the new Heavens and the new Earth, the Home where the Righteousness of Christ abounds in the neverending Day of His Resurrection from the dead.
The passage of time in this life on earth with all its griefs and sorrows has been superceded by the fact that you have been re-created for eternal Life with God in Paradise. You are no longer trapped by the daily grind of this world, by the endless cycle of week-after-week and year-after-year, with nothing much to hope for, but only more of the same-ol’ same-ol’ thing and a string of short-lived resolutions. All of that is temporary; it doesn’t define who you really are, nor what you will be.
By your Baptism into Christ you already participate in His New Creation. By faith in Christ Jesus — who circumcised your heart and gave to you His Name in those holy waters by His Word — you are living already with Him in the Garden of Paradise, walking with your Lord in the pleasure of a Day that never ends. And for that reason, you are able to enjoy the days and weeks and years that you live on this earth, as well; because you do so in the confidence and the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to the neverending Day beyond all trials, tribulations, and temptations.
So also on this Day, we all together as the Church participate in the everlasting Life and Salvation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Not by way of self-imposed resolutions to try harder and do better, though we surely ought to do both; but we enter into Life by receiving the Gift of Christ Himself, who gives meaning and purpose to this day and every other day, to this New Year and to every other year. As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and as you receive His Holy Communion, you are intimately united with Him — in His Body and His Blood — unto the Life everlasting.
It is was precisely for this reason and this purpose that He was conceived and born of St. Mary. And so, too, it was for this reason and this purpose that He shed the Blood of Circumcision, and that He was given the Name Jesus. For so has He brought completion and fulfillment to the Old Testament, and so does He bring to you the New Testament in His Blood, as surely as He has given you the new birth of Holy Baptism, and put His Name on you, and granted you a permanent place of Peace and Rest in the Kingdom of His God and Father, in the City of the Living God.
The One who calls you is faithful, and at exactly the right time He does all that He has promised.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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