Signs of the Covenant
+ In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today, January 2nd, is actually the ninth day of Christmas, but yesterday, the eighth day of Christmas, is an important feast in the Christian year, so I want to celebrate it today. Different denominations have devoted the eighth day of Christmas to different themes, but in the Episcopal church the day commemorates the ceremonies that would have been performed for Mary’s baby on the eighth day after his birth. Like every Jewish boy, Mary’s baby would have been circumcised on the eighth day, and formally given the name, Jesus. Hence the day appears in the Episcopal calendar as the Feast of the Holy Name.
Now the first thing to realize, if we’re going to talk about the Holy Name, is that Jesus’s name wasn't Jesus. Jesus is the English pronunciation of the Latin version of the Greek version of his actual Hebrew name, which was Yehoshua, sometimes contracted to just Yeshua. That contracted form of the name comes directly into English as Joshua. Yehoshua, Yeshua, or Joshua, was presumably a fairly common name in Jesus’s lifetime. People would have associated this baby Joshua with two other famous Joshuas in their history. One of those was Joshua the son of Nun, who was Moses’s successor and led the people of Israel into the promised land. The other was Joshua the son of Jehozadak, who was the high priest at the time of the prophet Zechariah. People didn’t necessarily stop to think what the name of baby Yehoshua meant, I suppose: we don’t always think about the meanings of our babies’ names today. But if they did think about such things, they would have heard the name as "Yah saves," where "Yah" is a shortened form of God’s own name. In the gospel according to Luke, the angel doesn’t explain why the baby is to be named Yehoshua, but in Matthew’s version, the angel explains that "You are to name him Yehoshua because he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Since the name means, "God is salvation," and the angel says, "because he will save his people," Matthew’s explanation of the name is a way for him to tell us that God is somehow at work in Jesus: what this Yehoshua does is what God himself does.
If we can remember that main idea, that Jesus is the new Joshua, the person in whom God acts to bring salvation to his people, we can think for a moment about the importance of his being circumcised. The Hebrew words for the ritual of circumcision are bris milah, the covenant of cutting; this is commonly shortened to just bris, "the covenant." The ritual of a baby’s bris continues God’s covenant with Abraham, as described in the book of Genesis. But in fact there are two stories about God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis, and the two stories have something very strange in common. On the one hand, there’s the story which lies behind the tradition of the bris: in this story, God orders Abraham to circumcise himself and all the males in his household. On the other hand, there’s the story in which God tells Abraham to cut several animals in two, and then at sundown a brazier and a torch pass between the animal parts. The torch and brazier in this version of the story symbolize God, and the slaughtered animals mean, "if I don’t keep the covenant, may the same thing happen to me that has happened to these animals"—it’s sort of a more dramatic form of "cross my heart and hope to die."
Now the odd thing about these two stories is that both of them are one-sided. In the first story only the human beings take part in the ritual, while in the second only God does. The point in both cases is presumably that God’s covenant with Abraham isn’t a deal between equals: there’s an enormous gap between God and his faithful servant Abraham, a radical division between God and human beings. So the stories show us Abraham and God signing two separate contracts, so to speak; but while that separateness makes the point about the separation between God and human beings, it does so at the cost of weakening the idea of a covenant in the first place. Abarham has, and we have, no choice but to trust God’s word, of course, but the fact remains that Abraham and God haven’t reached an agreement which some biblical Judge Judy would enforce.
Or, rather, I should say, Abraham and God have not reached such an agreement until that all-important eighth day after Christmas. We have to remember that what this baby does, God does; and on the eighth day after Christmas, the baby Jesus becomes a part of the covenant, the bris milah, in the same way that Abraham did. With the bris of this particular baby, God ratifies the covenant with Abraham in God’s own flesh and blood. And, at the same time, because this covenant with Abraham is a covenant in flesh and blood, when God does ratify that covenant it becomes a symbol of something else. This bris milah, this covenant of cutting God’s own flesh and shedding God’s own blood, become a foreshadowing of what Jesus himself calls a new covenant, the covenant of his blood shed for the forgiveness of sins. Eight days after Christmas, this bris of the baby Yehoshua makes us think back in history to Abraham: but it also makes us look forward in this baby’s life to his life’s end on a cross. And his own words make us look forward even farther, to the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving for his body and blood which Christians have celebrated down through the millennia, and which we celebrate here at this altar. When we think of this naming of Mary’s baby, when we think of this circumcision of one of Abraham’s descendants, we are reminded that the body wounded on that eighth day will be wounded again by Roman nails, that the blood briefly shed on that eighth day will be poured out by a Roman lance: and we are reminded that God gives us that same body and blood in the sacrament of the holy communion, the continuing sign of his covenant with us. These are the gifts of God for the people of God, and we are invited to take them in remembrance that Christ died for us, and be thankful.
--John Wm. Houghton
+ In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today, January 2nd, is actually the ninth day of Christmas, but yesterday, the eighth day of Christmas, is an important feast in the Christian year, so I want to celebrate it today. Different denominations have devoted the eighth day of Christmas to different themes, but in the Episcopal church the day commemorates the ceremonies that would have been performed for Mary’s baby on the eighth day after his birth. Like every Jewish boy, Mary’s baby would have been circumcised on the eighth day, and formally given the name, Jesus. Hence the day appears in the Episcopal calendar as the Feast of the Holy Name.
Now the first thing to realize, if we’re going to talk about the Holy Name, is that Jesus’s name wasn't Jesus. Jesus is the English pronunciation of the Latin version of the Greek version of his actual Hebrew name, which was Yehoshua, sometimes contracted to just Yeshua. That contracted form of the name comes directly into English as Joshua. Yehoshua, Yeshua, or Joshua, was presumably a fairly common name in Jesus’s lifetime. People would have associated this baby Joshua with two other famous Joshuas in their history. One of those was Joshua the son of Nun, who was Moses’s successor and led the people of Israel into the promised land. The other was Joshua the son of Jehozadak, who was the high priest at the time of the prophet Zechariah. People didn’t necessarily stop to think what the name of baby Yehoshua meant, I suppose: we don’t always think about the meanings of our babies’ names today. But if they did think about such things, they would have heard the name as "Yah saves," where "Yah" is a shortened form of God’s own name. In the gospel according to Luke, the angel doesn’t explain why the baby is to be named Yehoshua, but in Matthew’s version, the angel explains that "You are to name him Yehoshua because he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Since the name means, "God is salvation," and the angel says, "because he will save his people," Matthew’s explanation of the name is a way for him to tell us that God is somehow at work in Jesus: what this Yehoshua does is what God himself does.
If we can remember that main idea, that Jesus is the new Joshua, the person in whom God acts to bring salvation to his people, we can think for a moment about the importance of his being circumcised. The Hebrew words for the ritual of circumcision are bris milah, the covenant of cutting; this is commonly shortened to just bris, "the covenant." The ritual of a baby’s bris continues God’s covenant with Abraham, as described in the book of Genesis. But in fact there are two stories about God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis, and the two stories have something very strange in common. On the one hand, there’s the story which lies behind the tradition of the bris: in this story, God orders Abraham to circumcise himself and all the males in his household. On the other hand, there’s the story in which God tells Abraham to cut several animals in two, and then at sundown a brazier and a torch pass between the animal parts. The torch and brazier in this version of the story symbolize God, and the slaughtered animals mean, "if I don’t keep the covenant, may the same thing happen to me that has happened to these animals"—it’s sort of a more dramatic form of "cross my heart and hope to die."
Now the odd thing about these two stories is that both of them are one-sided. In the first story only the human beings take part in the ritual, while in the second only God does. The point in both cases is presumably that God’s covenant with Abraham isn’t a deal between equals: there’s an enormous gap between God and his faithful servant Abraham, a radical division between God and human beings. So the stories show us Abraham and God signing two separate contracts, so to speak; but while that separateness makes the point about the separation between God and human beings, it does so at the cost of weakening the idea of a covenant in the first place. Abarham has, and we have, no choice but to trust God’s word, of course, but the fact remains that Abraham and God haven’t reached an agreement which some biblical Judge Judy would enforce.
Or, rather, I should say, Abraham and God have not reached such an agreement until that all-important eighth day after Christmas. We have to remember that what this baby does, God does; and on the eighth day after Christmas, the baby Jesus becomes a part of the covenant, the bris milah, in the same way that Abraham did. With the bris of this particular baby, God ratifies the covenant with Abraham in God’s own flesh and blood. And, at the same time, because this covenant with Abraham is a covenant in flesh and blood, when God does ratify that covenant it becomes a symbol of something else. This bris milah, this covenant of cutting God’s own flesh and shedding God’s own blood, become a foreshadowing of what Jesus himself calls a new covenant, the covenant of his blood shed for the forgiveness of sins. Eight days after Christmas, this bris of the baby Yehoshua makes us think back in history to Abraham: but it also makes us look forward in this baby’s life to his life’s end on a cross. And his own words make us look forward even farther, to the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving for his body and blood which Christians have celebrated down through the millennia, and which we celebrate here at this altar. When we think of this naming of Mary’s baby, when we think of this circumcision of one of Abraham’s descendants, we are reminded that the body wounded on that eighth day will be wounded again by Roman nails, that the blood briefly shed on that eighth day will be poured out by a Roman lance: and we are reminded that God gives us that same body and blood in the sacrament of the holy communion, the continuing sign of his covenant with us. These are the gifts of God for the people of God, and we are invited to take them in remembrance that Christ died for us, and be thankful.
--John Wm. Houghton