A Son of Israel--January 1, 2020

A Son of Israel--January 1, 2020

"After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb." [Luke 2:21]

Eight mornings after Christmas Day, the world is recovering from a late night out.  Ears are still ringing from fireworks and shouting crowds.  Heads are still throbbing from having had too much to drink the night before. Bloodshot eyes might watch a parade or a football game on television.  Bodies are still tired from the running around of the last few weeks.  And stores have all taken down their Christmas wares to sell us Valentines. There is much to occupy our attention on the day we mark as New Year's Day.

But there is something else worth remembering on this day as well.  Eight days after he was born, we are told, the infant announced by angels and laid in a borrowed food trough was named and circumcised. On this day, the baby who had only been "the child" or "Mary's firstborn son" becomes what we were promised he would be for us: Jesus. And on this day, Jesus becomes visibly Jewish.

And while I have heard plenty of sermons over the years on the meaning of the name Jesus, and have heard many a preacher and choir wax poetic about how "there's something about that name," it seems the thing that needs to be said at this moment on this New Year's Day, less than a week since a stabbing at a Hannukah gathering in New York, and fourteen months since the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, is that Jesus was Jewish. After hearing the angry torch-bearing crowds in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017 shouting, "Jews will not replace us," from between Confederate and Nazi flags, it seems we still need to hear the word from our own Scriptures that Jesus was--and, as he is risen from the dead forever with the same nail-scarred body as he had walking through Judea two millennia ago, still is--Jewish. He carries not only the DNA of a family line that traces back to the sons of Abraham, but he was raised in the faith and culture and language of a particular people, a particular way of life, and a particular religion. His parents were devout, having him circumcised on the eighth day, and presenting him at the Temple as well as Luke later tells us. He was taught the Scriptures, and this Jesus grew up identifying himself as a member of the house of Israel.

Over the centuries, Christians have done an awful lot to try and forget the Jewishness of Jesus, to loot from the traditions of Judaism and appropriate them as our own, or to cast Judaism as the villain in the story of Jesus, as though he were not himself a Jewish rabbi.  But Luke doesn't want us to forget that Jesus is marked forever with the particular identity of a particular people, whose ancestors were freed from slavery in Egypt, brought home from exile in Babylon, and taught endurance under the domination of one empire after another.  In Jesus, we get the incarnation, not just of a generic, abstract deity into a generic, abstract humanity, but a particular God who shares a particular story with us, and who takes on the particular humanity of a brown-skinned Jewish peasant.  The God of Israel is not simply a cosmic "force," but has a certain personality, certain values, and certain traits you can spot in a crowded pantheon.  The God of Abraham and Sarah, of Miriam and Moses, chooses to be known for defending the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.  The God of Jacob has a reputation for being fiercely faithful and insistent on justice.  The God of David and Deborah cancels debts and frees slaves, binds up the brokenhearted, and gives sabbath rest to the weary. All of those are particular traits of the God self-named as "I AM," that are different from what Plato meant by his conception of the "Demiurge" or what Caesar meant when he called himself a god, too.  And that is the God whose story Jesus claims as his own, as well.

The One whom we confess to be our Lord and Savior, this Jesus, whose birth we are still celebrating on this Eighth Day of Christmas, is proudly and unabashedly Jewish.  That means, among other things, that Jesus will always wear the yellow six-pointed stars that marked the prisoners of Auschwitz (and the horrors there perpetrated by people who called themselves Christians).  And it means, too, that we are never permitted to make Jesus into some empty vessel to be filled with whatever meaning we wish--he is always and forever connected with the God of Israel's story, who sets captives free, feeds the hungry with good things, and makes a way in the wilderness.

For whatever else you do with your New Year's Day and this first day of a new decade, today it is worth remembering the ancient story of which we are a part today, because of the fact that Jesus is a son of Israel.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God.  Be your same gracious and just self today, and in your mercy let us be included in your storied promise.