A Homily for the Feast of the
Circumcision
When eight days were accomplished for
the circumcising of the child,
his name was called Jesus, which was so
named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
—Saint Luke 2:21
This morning, on the eighth day of
Christmas, we recall Jesus’s circumcision.
To understand the event that we commemorate this morning, we must turn
first to the Old Testament, to the seventeenth chapter of the book called
“Genesis”:
When Abram was ninety-nine years old,
the Lord appeared to him and
said: "I am God Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless. Between you and me I will establish my
covenant, and I will multiply you exceedingly. . . . My covenant with you is
this: you are to become the father of a host of nations. I will make nations of you; kings shall stem
from you. I will maintain my covenant
with you and your seed after you throughout the ages as an everlasting covenant,
to be your God . . . On your part, you
and your seed after you must keep my covenant throughout the ages. This is my covenant with you and your
descendants after you that you must keep: every male among you shall be
circumcised. Circumcise the flesh of
your foreskin, and that shall be the mark of the covenant between you and
me. Throughout the ages, every male
among you, when he is eight days old, shall be circumcised . . . Thus my
covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant.”
Circumcision was the sign and seal
of the covenant between God and Abraham.
So completely was circumcision identified with the covenant that the
very act of ritual circumcision —the event we commemorate today—was called
“berith” (or, in modern Hebrew, “bris”), which is the word for covenant. And so completely was the covenant identified
with the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, that the Jewish
people, understood as a religious community, was called “the
circumcision.”
God promised Abram that he would
become the father of a host of nations, and changed his name to Abraham,
“father of multitudes.” But that promise
was not fulfilled in
What, then? Is God’s promise not reliable? Can God’s word not be trusted?
The promises were made to Abraham and to
his seed. It does not say, "And to
seeds," as referring to many, but as referring to one, "And to your
seed," who is Christ. . . . For through faith you are all children of God
in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were
baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. . . . And if you belong to Christ, then you are
Abraham's descendant, heirs according to the promise.
Saint
Joachim, the father of John the Baptist, sang:
Blessed be the Lord God of
And hath raised up a mighty
salvation for us un the house of his servant David . . .
To perform the oath which he sware
to our forefather Abraham
that he would give us.
And
Saint Mary, the mother of our Lord, sang:
My soul doth magnify the Lord, and
my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior . . .
He remembering his mercy hath holpen
his servant
As he promised to our forefathers,
Abraham and his seed, forever.
Circumcision was a rite of the law,
signifying the promise made to Abraham and his seed, and it was observed for
nearly two thousand years, until the “seed” came to whom the promise was
made. That seed was Christ, who “became
a minister of the circumcision to show God's truthfulness, to confirm the
promises to the patriarchs, so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his
mercy.” And, now since the promise has been fulfilled in Christ, “neither
circumcision availeth anything, nor uncirucmcision, but a new creature.” Or, as
And Jesus Christ, who was that “seed” to whom the promise
was made, was circumcised in obedience to the law. The deeper significance of the ritual was
explained by the English priest John Keble, in a sermon preached on this day in
the first half of the nineteenth century, who likened it to the sign of the
cross traced on the forehead of each newly baptized Christian:
Such as the baptismal Cross is in the
Christian life, such was circumcision among God’s ancient people. It was His mark, made for life in the very
flesh of those who belonged to Him, setting them apart, in a manner, for suffering
and self-denial. It was a foretaste of
the Cross and, as such, the Saviour Himself received it. By permitting Himself, as on this day, to be
brought and placed in the priest’s arms and His sacred flesh pierced and blood
shed, by the pain which His tender infant body now suffered He did, as it were,
offer unto his Father the first-fruits of that full harvest of suffering which
was finally to be gathered in upon the Cross.
He sanctified our lesser sorrows, mortifications, and vexations, as he
was afterward to sanctify in His agony and passion our more grievous and
heart-searching trials: our great
disappointments, our shame, want, sickness, and death.
At his circumcision, Jesus was
obedient to the law, and in obedience endured the piercing and the
blood-shedding, even as he would in due course become obedient unto death, even
to death on the cross, for that is what the promise had always entailed.
For two thousand years, from the
time Abraham was ninety-nine years old until the time that Jesus was eight days
old, circumcision was the outward and visible sign of God’s covenant with his
people. By circumcision, the descendants
of Abraham signified their acceptance of God’s promise and their commitment to
live in accordance with his laws. But
there is always a danger that any outward sign may become just a hollow show,
an idle boast.
What God really asked of his people
was circumcision of the heart. In Torah,
in the book called “Deuteronomy,” Moses addresses the children of
And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy
God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and
to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy
soul, to keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command
thee this day for thy good? . . .
Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more
stiffnecked.
And in the seventh century, the prophet Jeremiah declaimed:
Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and
take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of
And a few years later, he prophesied that
The old covenant, having been
fulfilled, has been supplanted by a new covenant between God and his people,
the new
And yet it remains true that God
does not desire the outward show, but the inward conversion. As Scripture promises: “the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart
. . . to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul,
that thou mayest live.”
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