It's another Old Entish sermon. ;-)
Rev. Charles Lehmann + Eve of the Name of Jesus + Luke 2:21
In the Name of + Jesus. Amen.
In one of my favorite novels, there is a character named Treebeard.
Treebeard is a walking, talking tree, and he is very old. After two other
characters tell him their names, Treebeard says, “I am not going to tell you my
name, not yet at any rate. For one thing it would take a long while: my name
is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is
like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my
language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it
takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in
it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.”
Tonight is an Old Entish sort of night. It is a night of transition. We
are here to thank God for all the good gifts He has given us in 2009, and we
are looking forward to all He will do for us in the coming year. In the
church, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are both celebrations of the name of
Jesus. Tonight we remember the day our Lord was circumcised and received His
human name. This is a great way to celebrate the blessings that God
continually gives. It is in the Name of Jesus that we can rejoice in all of
God's gifts to us in the past, present, and the future.
I wonder if Tolkien was thinking about our Lord's name when he wrote about
Treebeard. It is certainly possible. Tolkien was a devout Christian, and the
names Jesus and Treebeard share a lot in common. Treebeard is a name that a
very old creature gives to two very young ones. It's shorthand. It barely
scratches the surface on the thousands of years that Treebeard has lived. It
tells none of the stories of him that could easily fill thousands of books.
“Jesus” is exactly that sort of name. It is very short, two syllables. It
takes less than a second to say it. It's meaning is not much longer. “The
Lord saves.” Just three syllables and maybe a half-second longer to say. It
is the name that God has given us to call Him by. It is a name that our mouths
can handle. But the name “Jesus” says a lot more than what the two short
syllables suggest.
Our Lord's name is a story. In the sentence, “The Lord saves,” we are
given a summary of all that God has done for us throughout history. It is one
sentence that speaks volumes. It is the name God chose for Himself. It is
absolutely wonderful that the eternal Son of God wants us to know Him by such a
beautiful name. It is wonderful that even in our Lord's Name we have a picture
of not just who He is, but who He is for us in particular.
And so, when we look at today's Gospel reading, we hear a name that
embodies all that God had ever done for His people in all of human history. It
takes us back to Eden, to Mount Ararat, to Egypt, to Israel, and beyond. It
points backward to God's mighty acts of salvation in the Old Testament and it
looks forward to what Jesus will accomplish in His suffering, death, and
resurrection.
Jesus receives His beautiful name on the day of His circumcision. On the
eighth day of His earthly life, Jesus is taken into God's house and is given
the sign of the covenant that He had given to Abraham two thousand years
before. It was on the day of our Lord's circumcision that He first shed His
blood on our behalf. It is appropriate that on the day He first shed His blood
that Jesus received the name that He had chosen even before His conception and
had made known to His parents through the angel Gabriel.
Tonight we will listen to our Lord's Name in the old Entish way. We will
hear the story of how Jesus has been saving His people since the days that the
dew of creation was still wet upon the ground.
The story began in Eden. It was there that “the Lord saved” for the very
first time. In the very first days of their lives, Adam and Eve disobeyed
God's command and ate of the one fruit God had not given them. This
disobedience brought death upon them and all their descendants. There was no
way for them to save themselves, and so the Lord came to them and promised that
the seed of the woman, Jesus, would destroy the power of Satan forever. In the
Garden of Eden when all humanity entered the bondage of sin, the Lord saved.
Hundreds of years later, when the world was so filled with wickedness that
God destroyed all of humanity with a flood, God came to Noah and his family and
promised that He would deliver them from His wrath through an ark. On the day
that the floodwaters came upon the earth, the Lord saved.
Hundreds of years later, when a famine struck the land for seven long
years, God sent Joseph to Egypt and made him the second most powerful man in
Egypt. Because of this, Joseph was in a position to provide for the needs of
his whole family. When all the world was starving because of a famine, the
Lord saved.
After the children of Israel had been enslaved in Egypt for 450 years, God
sent Moses to proclaim the Lord's judgment against Pharaoh and all the false
gods of Egypt. With hail, blood, gnats, frogs, darkness, and even the slaying
of the firstborn, God judged Egypt and saved His people. When Egypt was
murdering all the children of Israel, the Lord saved them.
A few days later, Pharaoh and his army trapped Israel on the shores of the
Red Sea. On that day, the Lord send a strong east wind, and the people of
Israel crossed the sea on dry ground. When Egypt followed, they were drowned
in the waters that had saved God's people. Even then, a millennium and a half
before our Lord's birth, God used water to judge and to give salvation. When
Pharaoh's army pursued those whom God had claimed as His own, the Lord saved
them.
When the people of Israel entered the land that God had promised to their
fathers, He raised up Joshua to drive out the evil nations that filled it.
With Joshua leading the way, God saved Israel from all those who had been
filling the land of Canaan with idolatry, debauchery, and murder. When the
Israelites returned from Egypt to their own land, the Lord saved them.
Time and again, the Lord has saved His people from everything that Satan,
the world, and their sinful flesh attacked them with. There is no enemy of His
people that God has not destroyed. There is no pain His people have suffered
that God has not taken into Himself.
Our Lord's circumcision made Him formally a part of the people with whom He
had made an everlasting covenant. All the nations of the world will be blessed
through Him. Beginning on the eighth day of our Lord's earthly life, He is
fulfilling all of the Old Testament law on our behalf.
On the eighth day, Jesus is circumcised. On the fortieth day He is
presented in the temple. In His twelfth year, He will debate with the greatest
biblical scholars of His day. And some thirty years later, in the fifteenth
year of Tiberius Caesar, Jesus will be baptized in the Jordan by John. He will
do this so that He might fulfill all righteousness.
None of these things that our Lord is doing will benefit Him. This little
baby who is crying out as the blade of circumcision cuts Him is the Lord God,
the King of the Universe. All things have been created by the power of His
Word. By His grace and His love, all things in heaven and earth are sustained.
He cannot benefit from His circumcision. There is nothing in it for Him but
blood and pain.
Jesus goes under the knife so that you may receive all that is in His Name.
He fulfills all righteousness so that when you are baptized into His Name, the
Father will credit all of His works to you. Jesus does nothing for His own
benefit. Our Lord's only focus throughout His whole life and ministry is you.
Jesus knows your need. He sees the sin in your heart. He knows all the
secret things that you have done this past year that cause you shame. None of
them are hidden from Him. He knows the full extent of your evil and mine. But
He does not shrink back from it. He does not turn His face from you. Instead
Jesus sets His face toward Jerusalem. He goes to Gethsemane. He puts up no
fight when He is arrested for crimes He has not committed. He gives them the
evidence they use to falsely convict Him. He welcomes the nails. He wears the
crown of thorns as if it has been made from the finest of gold.
Nothing turns your Lord aside from His work of salvation for you. The Lord
saves. That, dear Christian friends, is His name.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and
minds in faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Charles R. Lehmann
Pastor, Saint John's Lutheran Church, Accident, MD
http://www.stjohncove.org
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