On the Circumcision of Jesus

 Sermon. 01/01/2023. The Naming and Circumcision of Jesus.

 

Numbers 6:22-27

Luke 2:15-21

 

I sometimes wonder how disappointed a person would be, if they listened to the Church. Let me clarify: I sometimes wonder how disappointed a person would be if they listened to the Church in one regard. I mean if they really followed the Church and its pronouncements on Advent.

 

You know the claim, the contrast, I think.

While the world starts celebrating and feasting and otherwise keeping Christmas from mid-November,

in the Church, Christmas does not begin until the evening of Christmas Eve, and Advent is a season in its own right, one marked by self-reflection, silence, and going without.

So imagine you stuck to that. Not a mince pie, not a slice of stollen, not even a shepherd or an angel, before the evening of 24 December. And then?

 

And then you come to the main service on Christmas Day, and even here (if your church is being obedient) you don’t hear of angels or shepherds, but rather what may seem to be rather abstract stuff about (GOD), and the Word, and flesh, and so on – the Prologue to John.

And then?

And then already on the second day of Christmas you are thrown straight into the story of death. The Feast of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

A few days later, the most horrific story in the New Testament, the story of the slaughter of the innocents. The slaughter. Of innocents.

This is hard.

You may well think that you should have enjoyed all the mince pies and slices of stollen you were offered in November and December.

 

Surely, at the beginning of the second week of Christmastide, then we can return to a story which fits a season of feasting and celebration?

Well, let us see.

 

The first thing to say is that the Church Catholic keeps different feasts on 1 January.

For most Orthodox, it is the Feast of St Basil (who by the way often wears red and goes from house to house distributing presents, but that’s for another time).

For modern Roman Catholics, it is the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of (GOD).

For Anglicans (being Anglicans), we have a choice.

But all Christian calendars carry an awareness that the eighth day of Christ’s life was/is/is/was the day of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus.

 

So here your preacher can play safe, and speak about the naming and the name of Jesus, Yeshua, meaning (GOD) saves, or (GOD) is salvation, and let the feasting commence!

Or your preacher can play not-safe, and actually mention the less-discussed, the undiscussed, act of the circumcision of Jesus, an act which brings us back (we may as well say it) to the theme of blood.

You will have guessed that your preacher is going to play not-safe.

Let us mark the circumcision of Jesus.

 

There are a number of reasons for doing this. The first is that the circumcision of Jesus is one of those things even sceptics can be reasonably sure really happened. Now, if you get your information from social media ((GOD) help you), you will have a sense that it is controversial to say that Jesus even existed. But within proper historical studies, there is no real argument. Jesus (whoever he was) really existed. Someone called Yeshua was born, had a role as teacher and healer which impacted upon some, and was crucified by the Romans. And his followers were somehow energised after his death. These things are historical facts. And I say that another fact we can set alongside these is that Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day, in accordance with Jewish custom. (If there were any sense that Jesus might not have been circumcised, we can be sure that his opponents would have brought this up at every occasion.)

 

This brings us to the second reason to mark the circumcision. It is one obvious way of bringing to the centre of the stage something we may forget. Jesus was a Jew. And he wasn’t only a Jew “ethnically” (whatever that means). He was a Jew “religiously”. He was a Jew religiously, and, brothers and sisters, we have to face it: he was not a Jew who became a Christian (think about it)!

 

The story of the circumcision of Jesus occurs only in Luke. Luke has much more to say about the baby-and-child, Jesus, than the other gospels. And, in the stories Luke brings,

his parents are presented as devout Jews,

Jews really at home in the religion of Judaism,

Jews who relished Jewish ways of connecting with (GOD).

And I dare to say this applies to Jesus too.

This is something we Christians might usefully treasure and ponder in our hearts, like the Jewish mother, Mary.

 

I’m really not sparing you, am I? Well, I say again: if the Church brings so many martyrs into the calendar so soon after Christmas Day, then it must be telling us - against all the assumptions - that Christmastide is for adults. But of course I know that as adults (precisely as adults) we may have all kinds of moral or ethical objections to the circumcision of baby boys (who cannot consent). And, for sure, there are discussions to be had. If I say there are modern questions, that is not to dismiss or minimise them. But it is to say that ethical concerns were almost certainly not around for the Jews of Jesus’ day, for Jesus’ own family.

 

So what, then, was circumcision, in the day? What was it about? What was it for? Bluntly, we are not told. Nowhere in the Bible are we told. Back in Genesis, (GOD) commands Abraham to circumcise himself and his menfolk, and Abraham obeys. And it becomes a mark of the covenant with (GOD) from then on. It becomes a mark of (GOD)’s call. Is there any reason for this? Well, later Jewish tradition is clear that not all (GOD)’s commands have to be grounded in reason. They don’t all have to show how they do us good. (GOD) is (GOD) and (GOD) can call us to pattern our lives as (GOD) chooses (save for real harm alone). However, speculative rationales for circumcision abound:

it is about involving human beings in the process of creation, by giving them a final little tidying-up task to perform;

it is about moderating male sexual desire;

it is about having an enfleshed reminder of (GOD) every time a married couple has intercourse.

And so on.

 

But I want to make another connection. The fact that circumcision goes all the way back to Abraham means that it is essentially and intimately linked to… to blessing. Remember (GOD)’s promise to Abraham at the very start of his story [Gen 12.2f]:

 

“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you

[or will bless themselves in you].”

 

The later blessing of Aaron – “the LORD bless you and keep you. The LORD make his face to shine upon you…” – this blessing is something of an echo of this core blessing, this root blessing, the blessing of faith, the blessing in Sarah and Abraham. (Whether that was actually why it was chosen by the compilers of our lectionary for today, I cannot tell you. But I suggest that the resonances are just plain there.)

 

Perhaps you are not used to think of blessing as the central meaning of the Old Testament, from Abraham on. It would be surprising if you were. After all, here is the more normal Christian summary of the biblical story:

Creation – Fall – Redemption – Consummation.

The Old Testament, in this account, is overwhelmingly about the Fall.

So in the Old Testament Christians look for flickers of light in a dark night, and little else.

 

Well, brothers and sisters, I offer you another reading.

You can think of it as a parallel rather than an alternative reading, if you like.

Think of the story of Bible as one of

blessing upon blessing, of grace upon grace.

What happens if we think of the biblical story as

-         the blessing of creation (“very good”)

-         enriched by the blessing in Sarah and Abraham

(by circumcision and all the marks of all the covenants)

-         enriched in turn by the blessing of Jesus

embodiment of the covenants.

Whenever you have an Old Testament reading, ask yourself:

How is the core blessing in Abraham reflected here?

How is the new blessing of Jesus anticipated here?

 

So we have reasons to celebrate today.

We have the naming of Jesus - (GOD) saves!

And we have his circumcision too,

his circumcision into the blessing of Abraham.

So Christmastide, yes. Feast, yes. Celebration, yes.

In which spirit, you will find after the service a mince pie, and a piece of stollen!

 

Amen.

 

INTERCESSIONS

 

(GOD), who comes to us as child,

bless your Church.

that it may find again the delight of a child,

in its worship of you, and its service of its neighbours.

 

(GOD) in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

(GOD), who comes to us as child,

bless your world,

that people of power and influence

will find again the fierce sense of justice of a child.

 

(GOD), in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

(GOD), who comes to us as child,

bless this place,

that it be a source even of rest and gentleness,

such as every child needs.

 

(GOD), in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

(GOD), who comes to us as child,

bless all who are unwell,

or in need of any kind 

(among them those we name now in our own hearts)

May we cry out for them with a child’s urgency.

 

(GOD), in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

(GOD), who comes to us as child,

bless all who will die today,

and those who have shaped us and died,

and those who mourn,

and give us a child-like trust that you will remember them and us into life.

 

(GOD), in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

(GOD), who comes to us as child,

come anew to each one of us in this new year,

to show us the new next step you want us to take.

 

(GOD), in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Amen.

 

For Gd's Mercy - and More - Endure For Ever

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 16.02.20.

Second Sunday before Lent (Year A)

·       Psalm136 [135]

Let me begin with an expression of gratitude. One thing about how we worship that I am grateful for. This is not to pre-empt what emerges from our review of our worship, to take place in due course. It is just a personal expression of gratitude. I am grateful that, with very few exceptions, we have within our services all the Bible readings we might have. I mean we have all thr…. four!

Yes, not for the first time, I am going to insist that we have four Bible readings. A Hebrew Bible or Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a New Testament reading, and a Gospel reading.

In terms of themes, it is the Gospel that leads. The Old Testament reading picks up or anticipates or reflects or echoes or enriches or even explains at least one aspect of the Gospel reading. And the psalm then picks up or echoes one aspect of the Old Testament reading. The choice of readings is not random (even if it can feel that way); it is carefully crafted.

So, today, I will do something unusual. I will offer some teaching on today’s psalm. For surely the psalm of the day, Psalm 136, is – if I can use the technical expression – a real humdinger!

In both the Hebrew and the Greek, it consists of 26 verses, each of which begins with some exuberance about Gd, and that exuberance receives the response “for his mercy endures for ever”. In Hebrew that is ki le-olam chasdo. Ki le-olam chasdo. It’s not hard: try it with me:

ki le-olam chasdo.

The Greek is a little trickier: hoti eis ton aiona to eleos autou. We’ll build up to that.

Let us look at verse one.

Give thanks. The Hebrew is indeed from the normal word for saying thank you (also in modern Hebrew). It is plural. We are called here to give thanks together.

It may be important to make clear that in Hebrew to give thanks means something different from to bless. To bless Gd is not to give thanks. To bless is to give honour to Gd, in whatever circumstance you find yourself. (It may well come from the word for knee – to bless is then to bend the knee in honour.)

You see, if you study Jewish prayers, you will come across a prayer that a Jewish man prays every morning, blessing Gd “who has not made me a woman”. It’s very easy to hear that as saying: “Thank you Gd for the privilege of being a man.” But it is more: “I honour you Gd, who has given me the vocation of being a male Jew, and I accept the responsibilities that go with that distinctive vocation.”

Does that sound like special pleading? Well, let me tell you that there is a special blessing “on seeing a person of unusual appearance”. (I’ll let you decide if that’s one we need to learn.) There is also a blessing on hearing bad news, especially news of a death. No religious community would command an expression of thanks on hearing of a death. The blessing – not the thanks – is “Blessed are you, LORD, our Gd and Sovereign of the Universe, the true judge.” In today’s psalm, though, we are not blessing (honouring) Gd, but giving deep, rich thanks.

To the Lord. The word for “the Lord” here would take a lot of unpacking. Not in our sheets, but in many Bibles, the word would be in capitals, all in capitals (L.O.R.D). And that is a sign that the Hebrew text does not have the normal word for “Lord” – or even an unusual word for “Lord”. Rather what you have are the four Hebrew letters that amount to Y.H.W.H in our alphabet. And Y.H.W.H. is the divine name for Gd. It is the name Gd reveals to Moses when Gd speaks out of the burning bush. Gd says it stands for something like “I will be who I will be”.

The complication is that in the Jewish tradition, such was the concern not to take this name in vain, that the speaking of the name was restricted to the High Priest, on one day of the year (Yom Kippur), in the Holy of Holies. So – you can see the problem – no one actually knows for sure how to pronounce it. So, when people come across the divine name Y.H.W.H. in the sacred texts, they have to replace it with another word, if they are to have anything to say. And usually that is indeed the word for Lord (or actually “My Lord” [with the plural of majesty]): A-do-nai.

That may seem strange, but it is a practice the Christian communities took over without reservation. All the ancient Christian texts also use some kind of “circumlocution” when they come across those letters, out of humility before the majesty of the name.

This whole business sometimes leads people to say that in the biblical or Jewish tradition, Gd has no name. But that is wrong. Gd does have a name, and Gd does share Gd’s name with us.

Gd is not distant, or in-all-senses unknowable. The human task is actually to get to know Gd, who shares his name with us. But! But we are spared the danger of speaking that name in vain to our own harm; we are spared treating Gd as someone we might think of as being at our beck and call (“Oy, god, over here!”). So that we cannot do that, we are given the gift of ignorance of how to pronounce the name, in this life.

The Hebrew word for “good” is pretty much like our word, “good”. I mean: it says that Gd is attractive and beautiful and reliable and favourably disposed and moral; no one aspect is particularly to the fore.

And so to ki le-olam chasdo; for his mercy endures for ever. The word for “for ever” (le-olam) is not so much about eternity, as an abstract concept. It is not really about being outside of time. It means more: “into the future as far as you can possibly see or imagine”. If I wanted to debase the psalm, I might suggest the translation “going forward”. But I don’t. So I won’t. So please scrub that from your mind!

The climax of the verse, and of each verse in the Hebrew, is the word for “mercy”, chasdo, in Hebrew. Well, chasdo is his mercy; mercy on its own is chesed. Except that the Hebrew is much richer than the word mercy, or at least mercy as it is understood these days. The KJV often translates it as “lovingkindness” (though not, as it happens, here). And lovingkindness does capture another aspect of the word. In what is surely a favourite verse in the Bible – “the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” [Lamentations 3:22], it is the words “steadfast love” which are chesed in the Hebrew.

Steadfast love. Lovingkindness. We do need to be clear, though, that the word does not refer to any emotion on Gd’s part. It’s not romantic love. (Here I’ll make no reference back to Friday [Valentine’s Day]. Let us not add to the pain.) It’s not even a parent’s love for their child, in the sense that it is not that Gd looks at us and wants to go “cuchicoo”. But nor it is a duty on Gd’s part. Gd does not show us lovingkindness because some force is making Gd do so.

No. The best (least wrong) way of thinking of it is: it is Gd’s disposition. Gd’s disposition is to come close to us always with lovingkindness. It is what Gd does because of who Gd is. It is who Gd is.

And so, yes, I will say again. Hidden within this very word, chesed, is the lesson that

·       there is nothing we can do to make Gd love us more;

·       there is nothing we can do to make Gd love us less.

And so to the second verse of the 26…

I am teasing (as I hope you knew). I have reached the point of saying what I felt needed saying.

Ki le-olam chasdo!

For his lovingkindness endures for ever!

We could all do with repeating this at least 26 times every day. For psalm 136 I am grateful, and I invite you to join me in this.

Ki le-olam chasdo!

Amen.

Proclamation of the Date of Easter - Sermon - Proclamation

EPIPHANY SOLEMN PROCLAMATION OF THE DATE OF EASTER 2020

[Chanted]

Dear brothers and sisters, the glory of the Lord has shone upon us,
and shall ever be manifest among us, until the day of his return.

Through the rhythms of the times and the seasons

let us celebrate the mysteries of salvation.

Let us call to mind the new year's culmination,

the Easter Triduum of the Lord:

his last supper, his crucifixion, his burial, and his rising

celebrated between the evening of the Ninth day of April
and the evening of the Eleventh day of April,

Easter Sunday being on the Twelfth day of April.

Each Easter - as on each Sunday -
the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed
by which Christ has for ever conquered sin and death.

From Easter are reckoned other days we keep holy.

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent,

will occur on the Twenty-sixth day of February.

The Ascension of the Lord will be commemorated

on Thursday, the Twenty-first day of May.

Pentecost, joyful conclusion of Eastertide

will be celebrated on the Thirty-first day of May.

The Feast of the Holy and Undivided Trinity

we will mark with joy and awe on the Seventh day of June,

and the Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

follows on the Eleventh day of June.

Likewise, the pilgrim Church proclaims the Passover of Christ
in the feasts of the holy Mother of God,

in the feasts of the Apostles and Saints,
and in the commemoration of the faithful departed.

To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, Lord of time and
history, be endless praise, for ever and ever. Amen.

***

Something unusual did just happen. I know that (I was there). I will return to it. But first… first, not the Magi (sorry), and no sweets to throw at you in honour of the Kings (double sorry). First, Father Ted! Not the Christmas special, A Christmassy Ted, which we’ve all had chance to see 150 times over recent days, on one channel or another. I’m referring to another episode, when a singer-songwriter, not so loosely based on Sinead O’Connor comes to Craggy Island. In amongst all the characters’ high jinks, the singer is very critical of the Church. This in turn provokes from Fr Dougal the response: "Sure, she's taking all this Catholic stuff terribly seriously. Doesn't she know it's just a bit of fun?"

All this Catholic stuff - just a bit of fun. What do you think?

I'd say it's wrong, but... But it has a certain rightness to it, too!

I mean I think it is not wrong to expect - or at least hope - that Church is fun. Not only fun, sure. But fun is about as good a place to start as any. Coming to Church is something most Christians do with their "leisure time" (let's be honest), and the experience should be satisfying and rewarding and rich and sensual and involving - and so fun. We can dress up this point by saying pompously “the Church should be a good patron of the arts" if we want. But maybe that’s just a variation on the same theme.

At this time in the life of this Church - and in this very service - we are developing some additions, and introducing new ones. Fr Lee, as today's president, will lead us later in the service into the Rite of the Blessing of the Chalk (which, you may remember, we reintroduced last year). And - as perhaps again you can remember - I have chanted the Solemn Proclamation of the date of Easter. Another "special" something for Epiphany Sunday, for today.

You can tell us afterwards if either the chant or the chalk are in any way fun. But we in turn may remind you that nothing we do should be done solely because it is fun. Everything we do, whether or not it manages to be fun, should also be, well, yes, I am going to say… solemn. Solemn here does not mean dry or stilted or glum; it means “not trivial”, but showing forth something serious and deep and helpful to our lives as disciples of Christ.

The Solemn Proclamation of the Date of Easter. It is, I think, easy to see how this custom developed. I cannot tell you for sure when it began. But it long predates the time when most people had desk diaries, let alone gadgets beeping your appointments and your dairy at you seven times a minute. It dates from a time when you really needed someone to tell you when Easter was this year. But! But it is - evidently - something we can still do, even though we all know - or can find out - the date of Easter. Why? 

Again, it is not hard to say why. It is because Easter is so important to Christian faith. We can say that every day is Easter. We can say this because we read - we hear - the whole story of Jesus and the whole story of the Bible in the light of the resurrection. Including of course the story of the coming of the Magi, which we always have at the beginning of the year. It is because Gd raised Jesus from the dead by the Spirit that we have hope, and we read all the Bible as hope-filled, because the whole story is bathed in the light of that rising from the dead, that forgiveness, that hope, that Light, that Life. 

In other words, we can revisit our old friend, St Seraphim of Sarov. Remember him? I hope so. He it was who would greet everyone, in season and out of season, 365.25 days a year, by saying: "Christ is risen!" Remember that during the fast of Good Friday, he'd stand on the steps of the church, munching away, and declaiming, "Christ is risen!". Remember that if anyone came to see him, he'd say: "My joy! Christ is risen!" Because, if the Christian account of things is true at all, then every moment, and every encounter, is Easter. 

This does not mean that the Christian story is all light and no shade, all celebration and no tears, all triumph and no failure. It does not mean there is no death. We know that. But it does mean that the whole, the entirely, has a heart, has a core. And that core is the Easter story. So let us hear again the solemn proclamation of the date of Easter, this year of our Lord, 2020.

Just one little note of explanation. It is possible that the words “the Easter Triduum” sound just too churchy by half. They just mean the "Three Days of Easter". That in turn means the services on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil which we keep on the evening of the Saturday. Does that in turn mean that the Saturday service is more important than the Easter Sunday service? Bluntly, yes.

It is, at it were, the “Midnight Mass” of Easter. It is the time we all become St Seraphim together, when we solemnly proclaim: "Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!" And we can sing or hear a hymn of praise to the Easter candle, lit from the Easter fire. And the tune of that hymn is… echoed in today’s Proclamation. If we chant, it is not only for fun, but also for solemnity, for teaching, for reinforcement.

Is there here already a subtle encouragement to take part in the services from Maundy Thursday to the Easter Vigil, as one entity? Why, yes there is! Try them. You may even find them to be fun!

***

[Said]

Dear brothers and sisters, the glory of the Lord has shone upon us,
and shall ever be manifest among us, until the day of his return.

Through the rhythms of the times and the seasons

let us celebrate the mysteries of salvation.

Let us call to mind the new year's culmination,

the Easter Triduum of the Lord:

his last supper, his crucifixion, his burial, and his rising

celebrated between the evening of the Ninth day of April
and the evening of the Eleventh day of April,

Easter Sunday being on the Twelfth day of April.

Each Easter - as on each Sunday -
the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed
by which Christ has for ever conquered sin and death.

From Easter are reckoned other days we keep holy…

Likewise, the pilgrim Church proclaims the Passover of Christ
in the feasts of the holy Mother of God,

in the feasts of the Apostles and Saints,
and in the commemoration of the faithful departed.

To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, Lord of time and
history, be endless praise, for ever and ever. Amen.