SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE NAMING AND CIRCUMCISION OF OUR LORD preached at Christ Church St Laurence, Sydney, 1. i. 2017 Readings:
Numbers 6: 22–27;
Ps. 8; Galatians 4: 4–7;
Luke 2: 15–21
If you’re anything like me, this time on a New Year’s Day might normally find you quoting one of my favourite lines from the film Auntie Mame: “Oh, my, my, my: how can you see with all that light?” And, just as too much light can be problematic as one regains equilibrium after New Year’s Eve festivities, so also too much talk – especially loud talk – can be less than ideal! Sadly, our readings this morning provide no relief for NYE revellers; there is an awful lot of talking going on: The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, ‘Thus you shall… say to the Israelites…’ Out of the mouths of babes and infants… (we all know what comes out of the mouths of babes and infants as they cry with their full might and energy!) God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hears, crying, “Abba! Father!” And, notwithstanding all the noise of the angelic chorus, which might reduce many of us to silent awe, the shepherds still want to be talking: ‘they said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem”’; and, once they get to Bethlehem, ‘they make known what had been told to them…’ such that ‘all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.’ Even as they head back to the quiet hills, they continue ‘glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.’ Our gospel reading seems to echo the insight from Numbers: God’s speaking begins a whole series, a whole economy (we might say), of ‘speaking’ that pronounces blessing and grace. ‘How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv’n’, we sing in the carol: not according to Luke’s gospel! Clearly, if one were looking for a nice, quiet start to the New Year, this morning’s mass was not the place to come! Even our Introit and Gospel sentences are full of God speaking. Those sentences show us, however, that when our God speaks, it need not always be in words: “God spoke of old by the prophets, but in these days God has spoken to us by a Son.” Words are not the only medium by which God communicates God’s saving design to the creation God loves. Indeed, as John’s gospel reminds us, what we chiefly commemorate in this Christmas season is the Word becoming Flesh: God’s great speech of blessing to us is made manifest in a person who was born, lived, died and rose again for us. And, indeed, the feast we celebrate today, the very Octave of Christmas, gives us much to reflect on that both inspires and transcends words. This morning’s gospel makes clear that Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus reaches a climax in his naming and
circumcision. The name is, the gospel reminds us, ‘the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.’ We are, again, in an economy of shared communication: the angel tells Mary the child shall be called Jesus because ‘he will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High’, and ‘the child… will be called holy, the Son of God.’ It is a name that speaks of salvation, of the coming of God’s kingdom. Mary, obviously, passes the name on, and thus the name is given to her son. It is, as our Collect reminds us, the name that ‘every tongue will confess’. ‘Naming’, speech, is not all that happens, however. As well as being ‘named’ the child is circumcised. Obviously this action would not have occurred in silence: not only the screams of the child, but also the words of the Rabbi performing the operation, ensure there would have been noise. But by this action, a non-verbal statement is being made. St Paul captures that well in his description of the child born ‘under the law’. This child, and his parents, ‘perform everything according to the law’ (Luke 2:39). This child is a Jewish male – an engendered body, of a particular race. The action ‘speaks’ of the promise of God made to Abraham: it is a sign of blessing, a blessing that will extend to all nations (c.f. Genesis 17:11–14; 12:3; 17:4, etc.). In Jesus’ circumcision, we see from the very beginning of his life the sign of God’s blessing reaching out to all nations, all peoples, all times. That is one important point we see in the feast we celebrate today: the God whose name is revealed in and as blessing, ‘speaks to us in a Son’, a Son who takes on flesh, and in whose flesh, again, a sign of blessing is given. Indeed, from as early as St Paul, Jesus’ submission to all the demands of the Law was seen as vital in our salvation. And, from at least the third century of the Church, people have seen in the circumcision of Jesus the very first shedding of the sacred blood that ensures the salvation of all humanity: theological significance read in the non-verbal sign of the circumcised and named child. But there is another significant ‘silence’ to be found when, like Mary, we ponder in our hearts the mystery pointed to in this morning’s gospel. In NT 101, one is taught the different ways in which the four gospels present the ‘good news’ to be found in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. At the same time, one learns of the different communities for which, it is speculated, the different gospels were written. Now Matthew’s gospel, we are told, was written for a fundamentally Jewish Christian community. It was designed to show not only that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Jewish Torah and prophecy, but the continuation of Jewish tradition. By contrast, Luke’s gospel, we all learnt, was written for a fundamentally Gentile audience in the GræcoRoman culture of the first century. With that in mind, there is a yawning silence: why is there no mention of circumcision in Matthew’s gospel? And, more to the point, given that we know (from Paul’s letters, and above all the letter to the Galatians from which we heard this morning) the great difficulties circumcision, or its absence, caused in early Christian communities, and the horror Græco-Roman culture had for the practice, why does Luke include it? How is this action, that gets a very brief mention, part of Luke’s ‘good news’?
Well, every year at midnight mass we hear that Mary and Joseph make the trip to Bethlehem in response to ‘a decree… from Caesar Augustus’ (2:1). Luke sets the story of Jesus and all that his birth, ministry, life and death proclaim, against the background of the Roman Empire in which it takes place. Luke, it seems, wants to draw a strong contrast between Jesus, the One through whom God announces “peace on earth”, and the Caesars who claim to be establishing a Pax Romana. This contrast is not only a theological statement, but also a cultural and political statement. Graham Ward makes a useful point concerning the silent sign we hear of in this morning’s gospel: “In Græco-Roman culture, the circumcised body was a mutilated and wounded body”, not in any way the kind of body that was aligned with Hellenic ideals of beauty, not “the kind of body that could function as a microcosm of cosmic and political harmony.” 1 For Luke, Jesus is shown as “a counter-cultural figure, an ally of the poor, the sick, the destitute – all who are socially marginalised”;2 as the song his mother sang, and which we repeat at every Evensong, makes clear. By the way, St Paul makes a remarkably similar point in his letter to the Galatians, just before the verses we heard this morning. Paul reminds the Galatians that one hanged on a tree is cursed by God (Gal. 3: 13). A circumcised and crucified body: a sign of horror to Gentile and Jew alike. And yet the Church has always affirmed this very body was the great sign of God’s grace, God’s blessing, poured out for us. This body gave – and gives – us the best insight to the name of God, the name God pronounces to Moses: ‘the LORD, the LORD, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.’ (Ex. 33: 19) It is as if these physical openings in the body of Jesus correspond to the opening in God to pour out God’s self on us – seen, as Paul reminds us, in the Spirit that leads us to cry ‘Abba! Father!’, to name God in the same way, with the same familiarity, as Jesus names God. Through this body, we come to share in the inheritance God makes available in Jesus. A crucified and circumcised body: a horror to Jewish and Græco-Roman culture. And a body that seriously questions the ‘ideals’ our wider culture has for the body – where new sports and health clubs and gymnasia open weekly, while cooking shows and celebrity chefs dominate television screens, where fashion labels are hungered for, and young girls and women are encouraged to starve to get into them, and young men to take body-enhancing drugs. Similarly, in a political culture where, as recent elections show, we are in a quandary about what ‘leadership’ means, and any sign of ‘weakness’ in political leaders is traduced and denounced. Luke reminds us, too, at the end of his gospel, in the walk to Emmaus, that the Jews of Jesus’ day had a clear idea of what a Messiah would be: someone who would (to use a phrase!), “make Israel great again”. Instead, they got a crucified Christ. Perhaps, as ever, the gospel gives us new ways of thinking about these, and many other, things. New ways of thinking for a new year as, like Mary, ‘we ponder all these things in our hearts’: how do we think and speak about the leadership our culture seems to desire? How do we value ‘bodies’ and the persons those bodies are? Graham Ward, ‘The Politics of Christ’s Circumcision (and the Mystery of all Flesh), in Christ and Culture, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp.159–180, at p. 175. 2 Ibid., p. 176 1
Finally, one searing image from the last week – the faithful gathering in the ruins of the Cathedral in Aleppo, keeping the feast of the Nativity, recalling the birth of the One who is named God’s Son, God’s richest blessing. We see there, without any words, a sign of the church as it can be when it follows its Lord: a wounded body for the wounded; a body racked by the burden of the hope it bears in a world of violations.3 Thus we come again, as we do every Sunday, to the great and silent sign that transcends any words, even (or perhaps especially!) any sermon – broken bread and outpoured wine. Signs that speak of a body broken for a broken people. A body, indeed, broken and distributed by the Body of Christ, the Church; but also, like that economy of spoken gift we hear of in Numbers and among the shepherds, that eternally goes on – beyond the Church as well as within it. So, in this New Year, let us, like Moses, Aaron and his sons, like Mary, like the shepherds, rejoice that we are caught up in the economy of blessing, and speak the words of blessing given to us in and by the Christ child. And let us also recall that, as we kneel here week by week, we find God speaking to us again, in silence, of the wonderful mystery of a body broken for a broken world, as bread is broken for a broken people. However unwelcome it may be early on New Year’s Day, we joyfully recognise: ‘the light has come, the night has passed, the Day-star from on high has shined upon us’: to the glory of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
3
c.f. ibid., p. 180