Luke 2:21; Galatians 3:23-29; Numbers 6:22-27
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps on this day, more than any other day of the year, the expectations of the church are seen to be in sharp contrast with those of the world. Perhaps you will find that even your own expectations are frustrated when you begin to realize that the Word of God proclaimed to the Church this evening is not about resolutions, new beginnings, and hope for the new year to come, nor even about the events, challenges, and triumphs of the year that is past. For this day the Gospel demands that our sermon and ceremony be about circumcision and the Name of Jesus, and we are going to observe this.
Circumcision is not only an affront to our expectations of a New Year’s Eve celebration, but also an affront to our sense of what’s appropriate for polite conversation - The very word likely makes some of you squirm a bit and avert your eyes. And perhaps, even more so, circumcision is an affront to our reason: Why would God require such a foolish, ridiculous thing as circumcision? Could He find no other part of the body to use except this one? This sign of the covenant God made with Abraham, the cutting off of the foreskin of all males, was the cause of much humiliation and shame suffered by the Israelites. Moreover, what good is brought by injuring the body? It does not make the soul any better.
But all of God’s commands and works are exactly this way; in our eyes they appear as most foolish, humiliating, and useless, in order that proud reason, which considers itself clever and wise, may be disgraced and blinded, give up its arrogance and subject itself to God. Therefore, God was not concerned about circumcision, but about the humbling of proud nature and reason.
Our corrupted reason, along with our fallen nature, if it will even confess its sin and brokenness, believes that it can remedy the situation on its own and by its own terms; that is to say, it believes that by works it can make things right. But this corruption which afflicts mankind cannot be cured or healed, it must be cut off and destroyed. So, God commanded the sign of His covenant to be written in the flesh of the very part of the body from which all human life proceeds. Circumcision was a sign in a man’s flesh that was a reminder that all children born of man bear in their nature the original corruption of their First Father Adam, and that this corruption cannot be reformed or healed, but must be cut off and destroyed. Thus, we see that God, with no pretense of subtlety, gets right, shall we say, at the point: all children that are born of man’s seed are conceived and born in sin that leads to death. Sin is a terminal disease that cannot be cured, healed, or reformed; it must be circumcised, cut off, and destroyed.
Our deficiency does not lie in our works but in our nature. Our person, nature, and entire existence are corrupted through Adam’s fall. Therefore, not a single work can be good in us, until our nature and personal being are changed and renewed. The tree is not good; therefore, the fruits are evil. Thus, by circumcision, God very early taught everyone that no one could become righteous through works or through the law and that all works and efforts to become righteous or to be saved are in vain, as long as the nature and person are not renewed.
It seems to us then foolishness that Jesus, who alone was conceived apart from the seed of a man, but by the Holy Spirit, and was therefore alone without the original corruption of sin, but was holy and righteous, should submit to the covenant sign of circumcision. Why would the sinless one bear the cutting of His flesh intended to show that a man’s sin must be cut off and destroyed and his forgiveness given by God’s grace alone?
St. Paul writes in Galatians chapter four, “[Christ] was put under the law so that he might redeem them who were under the law.” The Law of God is perfect and holy, and it places upon all men the demand of perfect obedience, a demand for perfection that no man can obey – we are damned before we are even born! We are conceived and born in sin, and the wages of sin is, without exception, death.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman [not of man’s corrupted seed], born under the law [just like us], to redeem those who were under the Law.” When Christ was circumcised, He began to fulfill the perfect and holy Law of God, not for Himself, but for us. Christ was, and is, for us, the Second Adam, who did not sin so that all that are born of His seed are born, not in the corruption of sin, but in holiness and righteousness as sons of God.
And finally, in death, He who knew no sin or wrong was Himself violently wronged, and man’s redemption was made complete. For when death overcame him and slew him, without however having any claim or cause against him, and he willingly and innocently permitted himself to be slain, death became indebted to him, having done him wrong and having sinned against him […], so that Christ has an honest claim against it. The wrong which death perpetrated against him, is so great that death is unable to pay or to atone for it. And so, death must be under Christ and in his power forever. […] He was not obligated to it, and so it is rightfully subject to him, and he has become its master, has vanquished it and given it to us as a present, so that it must come to an end and no longer have any say over those who believe in Christ.
In this same way, on the eighth day of His infant life, Christ submitted to the Law of circumcision and His holy flesh was cut, His innocent blood was shed; but in so doing, Christ was wronged and became master of this Law – it is finished. And He presents this fulfilled Law to us now as a gift – we call it Holy Baptism; a washing of water and Word that gives to us all that belongs to Jesus, whose name, also celebrated this day, means “God’s Salvation.” There is no longer a Law or command to circumcise; that Law has been fulfilled and mastered by Jesus Christ. Now there is instead a gift, the gift of Holy Baptism. It is a baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection, a grafting into the True Vine, and a promise – a betrothal – from the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, to His beloved, His Bride, the Second Eve, the Church. We are heading for a wedding; and the feast we celebrate tonight, and every Lord’s Day, is but a foretaste of the feast to come.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
