Co-missioners, 

Last night a lot of us joined the world in its annual New Year’s Eve exercise of hoping against hope. This morning we woke up to one of the Church’s annual celebrations of the Hope Worth Hoping, Christ Jesus is His Name. Or so the Church at its best will declare with joy on this Eighth Day of Christmas, January 1, 2026.

Time was when some of us Lutherans still referred to this day as the Feast of the Circumcision and offered prayers that reflected this theme—see The Lutheran Hymnal p. 57 and Service Book and Hymnal p. 79. These habits started disappearing after the green hymnal of 1978 opted to drop any mention of circumcision and to focus instead on the naming of Jesus as the day’s chief topic. Not that anybody noticed aside from a few liturgical geeks like yours truly. January 1 is not a go-to-church day unless by chance it falls on a Sunday, in which case preachers out there are faced with a choice of whether to observe the festival or not. Many, I think, will skip it in favor of the propers for the First Sunday after Christmas. These afford the luxury of a hefty stretch of John 1 on which to anchor a sermon. By contrast, the Gospel for “Name of Jesus” (thus ELW) amounts in effect to a single verse, Luke 2:21—and really, what can one do with that? 

Well, quite a bit as it happens. By way of example, here’s a snippet culled from a sermon I preached on January 1, 2012 when, yes, Sunday and the Feast Day coincided— 

Comes the surprise, the great Christmas surprise. Whoever would have thought that the God who saves, with all the power in the universe at his disposal, would pick such a quiet, sneaky way to start saving us all? A baby boy in a manger; and eight days later, a standard run-of-the-mill Jewish naming ceremony, complete with circumcision? 

On Christmas night those shepherds… stood in the presence of the baby—and there, for the first time in all their sorry lives, it hit them, how precious they were to God. So precious, that God’s Son was suddenly their brother, the kind who is a real brother, one who shares everything he has with siblings who need it, a brother who takes upon himself the burdens his siblings cannot bear. The first burden he takes on is the burden of their circumcision—their own necessary subjection to the law of God that they themselves are unable to keep and obey. So Jesus does it for them. And that’s how God saves them. That’s how God makes the kind of peace that isn’t Caesar’s, a peace that surpasses all understanding and is strong enough to overcome the hostility of sin and death. 

The point here, of course, is how Christ keeps the law for us. Nine years later I returned to this theme in a New Year’s Eve homily, the only one I ever offered strictly via Zoom. The date was December 31, 2020. An in-person service was not an option that night in the congregation I was serving. Nor was it an option there to forego a New Year’s Eve service altogether. So Zoom sufficed. What emerged at the end of that dreadful pandemic year was a reflection sparked by Ecclesiastes 3, the evening’s Old Testament reading, on how Christ redeems us from a particular aspect of the law which has to do with time. Galatians 4 and Luke 13 enter in significantly and also bear consulting before you proceed. See below for quick links.  

I pass this along thinking that some of you might find it of devotional interest today. Really, were spirits any less gloomy at last night’s end of 2025 than they were at the end of 2020? So who knows, perhaps the moments you spend with this will sparks a breath or two of relief and with it some fresh thanksgiving for the outrageously sweet swap that the Gospel is all about. If so, thanks be to God. 

Peace and Joy, 

Jerry Burce, Co-editor 
for the Crossings Community

______________________________________________________________ 

On Timing: A Homily

New Year’s Eve, 2020

Texts: 
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 
Galatians 4:1-7 
Luke 13:6-9 

IN THE NAME of the Father, and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. 

Jerry Burce

Timing is everything, as we heard the wise man say just now. Get it right, and life runs well. Get it wrong, and it doesn’t. 2020 was proof of that—as if any of us needed more proof than the proof we’ve been getting every day of our lives. I think of my long-ago college days. There’s a time for goofing off with your pals, a time for knuckling down with the books, and still another time for turning in the paper. I didn’t always get that timing right, as a crummy grade or two continues to testify. Later came parenting with all the timing challenges that presents. To quote the wise man directly, there’s a time to embrace the child, and a time to refrain from embracing. One of the many things I thank God for tonight is how he rescued me and the kids from all the mistakes I made with that one. They all turned out OK, and they still like their dad, or they seem to. What more can you want? And now it’s their turn to blow the timing with their kids, and to count on God to get them through. 

Counting on God: that’s the one thing for which the time is always right. But more on that in a moment. 

First a bit more on 2020 and all the timing mistakes that made it so much worse than it had to be. There’s a time to shut down and a time to open up. A time to breathe easy and a time to wear a mask. People got sick this year and too many died because we couldn’t get this right. A lot of other people wound up broke.  

There’s a time to contest an election and a time to say it’s over. We couldn’t get that right either this year, not as a unified country. And so the American air we breathe tonight, whether with or without a mask, is as full as ever with the poison of loathing and suspicion. 

There’s nothing new about this, of course. It’s as old as a man and a woman deciding that now is the time to sample the fruit from that tree over there. “Go ahead,” says God when he comes along to sort this out. “From now on, you call the timing shots, at least on the everyday questions. See how you like it.”  

Turns out we haven’t liked it so well, have we. And we’ve liked it even less that God has kept a grip on the big timing questions. God knows when it’s time for me to be born, and a time for me to die. Or when, in the unfolding of all our lives, it’s a time for him to plant and a time to pluck up, a time for him to kill and a time to heal, a time for him to keep and a time to throw away. Hardly ever does it happen that his sense of timing is in synch with our own. There were moments for most all of us this year when it was awfully hard to like God, or to trust him, for that matter, and this in part is why. 

+ + + 

And then, of course, came Christmas—which, by the way, it still is, Day 7 of the 12. So tonight we hear again of God’s masterstroke in this matter of timing. Remember how St. Paul put it in our second reading? “When the fullness of time had come…”—when the moment was perfect, as we might say: that’s when God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those were under the law. Among other things, this law of timing, the one that’s been killing us this year. Get it right, and you win. Blow it, and you’re toast.  

This is the trap that Christ our Lord was born to spring us from. When the perfect moment came for him, he saw it, he grabbed it. I would have run from it, and so would you. That’s why for our sake, for our salvation from this law of timing, he let himself be hoisted on a cross to hang and die. And at exactly the right time, here’s what he said: “It is finished.” No more guesswork, no more hit-and-miss for you when it comes to the one great thing that matters most above all others. And with that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit to make it so. 

Here’s what Jesus did in that moment. He turned all of my moments, and yours too, into exactly the right moment for trusting God—for counting on God to hold us in his heart as children dear to him beyond all measure. There was never a moment in 2020 when God wasn’t doing that. This includes the awful moments—not only the ones that others spoiled, but the ones I spoiled for others. It includes the ones that made us think and fear that maybe God had turned his back on us.  

But no, he hadn’t. And no, he never will.  

From Canva

I have no idea what’s in store for us in 2021. None of us do. We can take a few things for granted. We’ll all continue to make a mess of the times. We’ll weep when we ought to laugh or love when we ought to hate; we’ll tear when we ought to sew, and when it’s time to speak we’ll keep our mouths shut, or vice versa. It’s bound to happen. 

As for God, he’ll keep his own firm grip on our times and seasons. No one will be born and no one will die next year without his say-so. My times are in his keeping, and yours are too. 

Of course, those times are in Christ’s keeping as well—Christ our Lord, the gardener in the parable he told, the one who will use this year as he used last year to dig around our baptized roots and fertilize them with his Word, his Promise. Why? So that when God comes looking for the fruit he wants to see, he’ll find it. What he’ll find in us, that is, is a simple, stubborn trust that, come what may in 2021, nothing but nothing is going to separate us from God’s astonishing love in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

You are God’s dear daughter or son tonight, and if a child, then an heir. Now is the time to count on that. Tomorrow is too. 

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Thursday Theology: that the benefits of Christ be put to use
A publication of the Crossings Community