Happy New Year!

First, I want to congratulate you for being here on this morning of New Year’s Day. I know that at least some of you stayed up late last night, maybe drank a bit more than you are used to, and might be here despite a sore head. Well, this morning Jesus gets named and circumcised, so I don’t want to hear any complaining out of you!

This is an odd Sunday in our church year. Normally, we would be celebrating the First Sunday after Christmas. But this year, Christmas fell on a Sunday, which means that New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday, and in the church year, New Year’s Day is when we observe the Feast of the Holy Name. In technical parlance, the Feast of the Holy Name "takes precedence of a Sunday," which means that if it falls on Sunday, it bumps the normal Sunday readings, so instead of celebrating the First Sunday after Christmas, here we are celebrating the Feast of the Holy Name.

This feast goes back 1500 years, and until the 1979 Prayer Book, it was called the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. In keeping with the commandment from Genesis, little Jewish boys are circumcised on the eighth day after birth, and since Jewish counting includes the first day, that brings us to today. No one knows why circumcisions are to be performed on that schedule, but it is interesting to note that medical science has discovered that on the eighth day after birth, the baby’s blood clotting ability stabilizes.

Anyway, I think we call it Holy Name instead of the Circumcision because we’re squeamish, or perhaps because we don’t want to blush. Well, Joseph and Mary wouldn’t have blushed; they considered this a very, very important part of keeping the Jewish law and celebrating their identity as Jews. In Judaism, the ritual of circumcision, called the "Brit Milah," (meaning "Covenant of Circumcision") is usually referred to as a "Bris," (meaning simply "Covenant"). It has two parts: the circumcision, and the naming. I’ll take them one at a time.

A poll was taken once asking Americans why Jesus was circumcised. I’ll bet most people were surprised to learn from the question that Jesus was circumcised, but they probably pretended that they had known that all along, then seventy per cent said it was for hygienic reasons. Wrong! In Genesis [17: 10-14] God told Abraham that circumcision was to be an outward sign of the covenant God made with God’s people, the Jews. Hum, that sounds sort of like, "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," and that sounds familiar. In Christian theology, we would call that a "sacrament." In Judaism, this is not about hygiene (that issue is widely debated but is irrelevant of Jewish practice). This is a tremendously important way of signifying identity and relationship to God.

I went to a Bris once. Before I went to seminary, a Jewish co-worker had a baby boy and, knowing I would be interested and respectful, she invited me. I was very curious, and wanted to be present for everything. There was a short consultation with the Mohel (the guy with both religious and medical training to do the cutting) who decided that it was OK to have a non-Jew like me in the room when the surgery was performed. (Women were not allowed.) So, I was given the green light and I watched it all. And I just want to reiterate that I don’t want to hear any complaining out of you about sore heads this morning.

The occasion was really quite wonderful. It was festive and devout at the same time. The prayers were beautiful and meaningful, and everyone, well, almost everyone, had a good time. (I’m not sure the baby enjoyed it.)

That happened about 1986. A few years ago, I was out shopping, and I ran into the co-worker who had invited me. Next to her stood a strong, healthy, good-looking teenage boy. It was all I could do not to say to him, "I watched while you got your . . . ." But I didn’t. And he owes me.

After the circumcision comes the naming. This is the second part of the ceremony. The baby boy is named. In Jesus’ day, it was traditional for the father to pick the name, and the first-born boy was usually named after the father. But in Matthew’s gospel God told Joseph in a dream to name the baby "Jesus," and in Luke’s gospel, the angel Gabriel told Mary to name him "Jesus." It probably raised a few eyebrows for them to do that, but, really, there probably weren’t many eyebrows left un-raised anyway.

All very interesting, at least I hope so. But, really, what has this got to do with us? Some Christians have their baby boys circumcised, some don’t, but whether they do or not, it is not a requirement of Christianity. It is simply none of my business. Well, the reason it is worth spending some time on circumcision is that it might be instructive to us on this New Year’s Day to look at why circumcision is not required by Christianity. It turns out to be quite a story.

Much of Acts of the Apostles and the New Testament letters are written against the backdrop of a big controversy, I mean a big controversy, over whether non-Jewish men who wanted to be Christians had to be circumcised first. I wanted you to know something about circumcision in Jewish life to see how important this issue was to them. We also need to realize that Christianity started off as a movement by Jews for Jews within Judaism. For Peter and James and others who saw it this way, it was unthinkable that someone could be a follower of the Jew from Galilee without being a Jew and keeping the Jewish law (which included circumcision and dietary regulations).

St. Paul, however, saw it differently. Now, there are a lot of things some of us don’t like about Paul’s writings, things that sound very exclusive, but much of that Paul didn’t write; it was added to his letters later by people who just couldn’t take how egalitarian, open, unrestricted, classless, graceful Paul really was. He recognized women in a way that was shocking in his culture, and Paul, who called himself the "Apostle to the Gentiles," believed that Christianity should be available to everyone, not just Jews.

So Paul substituted baptism for circumcision. And, man, was there a fight! For many, many years the people who agreed with Paul and the people who agreed with Peter argued and called each other names and tried to sabotage each other. In the Bible itself Paul calls Peter a hypocrite and gives him a good tongue-lashing. (Gal. 2:11-14) The good news, I suppose, is that we didn’t invent all that.

Finally, with the future of Christianity hanging in the balance, God lead Peter to change his mind. And that is the reason that everyone in this room who is not a Jew can be here, because St. Paul discerned that Jesus’ vision was one of radical inclusion, not ritual purity, and he translated that vision into his own time. Let me say that again: St. Paul discerned that Jesus’ vision was one of radical inclusion, not ritual purity, and he translated that vision into his own time.

So, little boy babies aren’t made Christian by circumcision; they are made Christian by baptism. And guess what? So are little girl babies.

All of this is worth noting because the work of discerning Jesus’ vision of radical inclusion and translating it into our own time — is not finished. Over the centuries, that issue has presented itself many, many ways, and we Christians have argued over it many, many times, calling each other names, and sabotaging each other, and sometimes much worse. Ethnic divisions, cultural divisions, language divisions, national divisions, racial divisions, gender divisions, class divisions, economic divisions, and now orientation divisions — we have a long list of things that have caused us to divide instead of include. Sometimes there has been much heartache and shameful conduct that simply can’t be called Christian, but every time, in the long run, the Church has eventually come down on the side of inclusion over purity.

As we begin this new year, a time when we traditionally take stock and start new projects, we need to remember that we have an old project that always calls us to start it anew: to see with Christ eyes, to look for people who are divided from us, shut out, disenfranchised, pushed away from the table, and invite them in.

Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day, as he should have been, to symbolize that he was a Jewish male in covenant with God. That’s what is required of male babies in order to be Jewish. It was an act or ritual purity, and an appropriate one.

But then they named him what God told them to name him: "God Saves." Our new year’s project, every year, has to be to decide anew how to discern this baby’s radical vision of inclusion over ritual purity, so that his name, entrusted to us now, cuts through all the divisions.

So I want to invite you to join me in making a New Year’s resolution to see the world through Christ eyes, and to cut through the divisions in the name, the mighty name, the sweet name, the powerful name, of "God Saves."