The Circumcision and Name of Jesus.

Texts: Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:21

You've probably spent some time this week exchanging gifts-not with one another but at the stores from which they were purchased. Or buying more new things with gift cards we received. This seems to be the way we spend the days of the Christmas season: exploring our gifts and acquiring still more things. So when all is said and done, what have we received this Christmas?

During these days of Christmas we continue to reflect on that question, and today I turn to Paul's letter to the Galatians. This is not a part of the Bible that we usually associate with the Christmas season, but if you want a brief summary of the message of Christmas, the few verses we heard read from it are probably about as good as you can find. Perhaps a look at them will help us to get beyond the tendency to think of this season as nothing more than a twelve day birthday party for cute little baby Jesus.

These verses reflect on the nature of the incarnation, and give us some insights into both what it meant for God, and what it means for us. I'd better pause for a definition in case some of you are not familiar with this theological word: ‘incarnation'. It refers to the act of becoming present in a body, or becoming a person with a body. You will occasionally hear others use it of people, especially if they believe in reincarnation (re-incarnation). They will speak of someone who used to be incarnate in another body in a previous life finding a new incarnation; that is becoming present in a new body. That's a view associated with Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. (Actually, Buddhists seek the enlightenment that will free the soul from suffering endless reincarnations.)

So when we speak of the incarnation of God in Jesus, or of God becoming incarnate in Jesus, we are talking about God becoming present among us in bodily form as a human being named Jesus. We imply that God can and does exist without a body, as Spirit, in a form that we cannot touch or see; but we are also saying that in Jesus, God has become fully present in a human body, in a form that is not only touchable and seeable but which is subject to all the limitations and vulnerabilities that we, as incarnate being, are subject to.

This is precisely what is described in the first verse we heard from Paul: "When the time was right, God sent a rescuer, God's own Son; born to a woman in the usual way, growing up under the thumb of the law, just like the rest of God's people."

Even before we begin to think about why God might have done this, or what impact it might have on us, this is an extraordinary claim. The biggest miracle of the Christmas stories is not that a virgin became pregnant, but that God became incarnate. Actually, with today's technology, a virgin becoming pregnant need not be a miracle at all. It would require nothing more than a simple little medical procedure. But God becoming incarnate is analogous to the medical practitioner not just impregnating the virgin, but turning himself into an unborn baby and placing himself in her womb, and wagering his whole future on the hope that she won't miscarry him.

Is that a shocking thing to say?  Well, when God becomes a human being - becomes incarnate - God is voluntarily exposed to the same fears and risks and dangers that the rest of us face. I mean, if Christ could die at the end of his life, why not at the beginning? In birth, God is exposed to the risks of a fatal complication. In childhood, God is exposed to the risks of childhood accidents, or growing up in poverty if Joseph couldn't find work, or being bullied at school. Throughout an incarnate life, God is exposed to the threat of violence, to the humiliation of living under the heel of hostile forces, to the fear of terrorist attack.

Throughout a human life in relationship with other human beings, God is exposed to the risks of being misunderstood, of being rejected, of being betrayed, of being falsely accused and eliminated.  Isn't this exactly what happened to Jesus? When God becomes one of us, God cops life in all its beauty and ugliness, just like we do.

You can't express the totality of the Son of God's human life more concretely than the event we commemorate today. The baby Jesus was circumcised eight days after his birth. We can focus on the spiritual aspect of this ritual, that Jesus was included in the covenant God made with the Hebrew people as the descendants of Abraham. But the spiritual aspect of circumcision is inseparable from the physical sign - the removal of the foreskin. Every Jewish boy get circumcised. Try explaining that procedure to middle school girls in confirmation class.

Now the incarnation is utterly amazing in itself. But the next question is "why?" Paul addresses the question in his next verse, and then elaborates on it in the rest of the passage. He says that God sent the Son into such circumstances so that he could get everyone else out of them. And then in elaborating, he puts it in family terms. The Son did what he did in order that we might have the opportunity to be adopted into God's family.

What we have here is the most extraordinary exchange of gifts. We give Jesus our humanity, and he accepts it, and offers us his divinity in exchange. He becomes a child of human beings, in order that we might become children of God. He becomes what we are, in order that we might become what he has always been.

Paul is quite explicit about this. Because you are now God's children, the Spirit of God's child - Jesus - has been sent into your hearts so that you may cry, Abba, Father - just as Jesus taught us to do. And, he says, this changes everything because as God's children, you are no longer at the beck and call of the things that once dictated your every move, whether the restrictions of the Law or the terrors of lawlessness. We no longer have to go with the flow and slavishly do whatever the world around us prescribes for us to do. We no longer have to become paranoid and isolationist when the society around us expresses fear of the outsider and cry out for more law and order. We no longer have to compulsively consume when the society around us tells us that our worth is measured by the sexiness and up-to-the-minuteness of our accessories. We no longer have to destroy ourselves and our loved ones by trying to conform to the impossible images of youth, beauty, and success that are constantly bombarding us.

Life can be different now, because we have become children of God, and as God's children we will receive from God all that has been kept in trust for God's children. Jesus was born under the thumb of those constraints and pressures, just the same as we are. But he came into such a life to enable us to find a way out. When God became incarnate in Jesus, he put himself in our hands, at our mercy, so that we could put ourselves into God's hands and receive God's mercy - the gift of new and abundant life. And at this table, Jesus continues to put his body into our hands, so that we might continue to put ourselves in his hands and know ourselves as God's beloved children. Amen.

- Frank C. Senn, STS, Pastor, Immanuel Lutheran Church, Evanston, IL