Some thoughts on January 1, 2009

This morning the Church asks us to remember that when we wake up today, we may well want to remember, as Luke tells us, that” at the end of eight days, when Our Lord was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.” In other words, January 1 is the Feast of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus.

Quite frankly, except on January 1, I don’t think about the circumcision of Jesus very much. But today I’m aware that there are numerous paintings depicting the scene, and that when January 1 occurs on a Sunday, I may hear a sermon reminding me that long ago Jesus began to bled for our redemption. So soon after birth, his Passion begins. Having never seen a medical circumcision, I’ve always imagined it, however, to be somewhat painful for the infant, but I could be wrong; maybe today some kind of anesthetic is used. When Jesus was circumcised, however, I’m quite sure he did a good bit of screaming and crying in protest. And I’m equally sure that Mary, setting her eyes squarely on the body of her screaming son, watched with empathy as the local surgeon went work on her son while Joseph did his best to hold their son firmly on the operating table.

As I understand the custom among Jewish families, the circumcision and naming of a Jewish baby took place eight days after birth, and it was performed at home; a specialist cut the prepuce, the father gave the child a name and imposed his hands on him. Luke seems to imply that Jesus was most likely circumcised in or nearby the “inn” inasmuch as makes no mention of it occurring anywhere else. Today when we see paintings, icons, or other depictions of the event, the artist frequently places Jesus’ circumcision in the Temple of Jerusalem. That fairly well eliminates the family setting of the ceremony and ritual. Moreover, artists, often not squeamish about anatomical details, often depict the cutting up close and often with an altar in the scene to link the blood of the Circumcision to that of the Passion. Sometimes a lamb is added to the scene.

So what are we to make of this day, this scene, this realization of what’s happening in our Lord’s life. For me it’s a very profound reminder that Jesus’ heart always pumped Jewish blood, that he was bilingual, speaking Aramaic with a Galilean accent, the way his mom and dad chatted, and that he learned to read Hebrew with the rest of boys at the local synagogue. During the so-called 'missing years' filled in by spurious apocryphal gospels, my Jesus undoubtedly received a Jewish education perhaps, as Jonathan West suggests, along these lines: “at five years of age" he would be "ready for the study of the written Torah, at ten years of age for the study of the Oral Torah, . . . at 20 for pursuing a vocation, at 30 for entering one's full vigour.”

My Jewish Jesus grew up watching Roman soldiers patrol the streets, played Jewish teen-age games, learned how to chant the psalms from his elders, sweated in a saw-dust strewn carpenter shop with Jewish tools, and got acquainted with local zealots (terrorists, some of whom were active in his inner circle). He was liturgically informed, observed Jewish prayer customs (e.g., reciting the Shema three times a day), went to synagogue every Sabbath, made frequent pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem for important religious celebrations like the Passover. When traveling he mostly walked and sometimes rode donkeys. My Jewish Lord slept out in the fields when necessary, made good friends among Jewish women, and often overstepped cultural boundaries and local expectations. He loved the Torah, especially the Prophets and the Psalms. My Jesus had a Jewish memory. And yet he had a way of being more--the most!--authentically Jewish man than all of his Jewish friends and critics. While Jewish, he saw into the heart of Almighty God who is not Jewish. And therein lay the tension, the suffering, the Passion of his life.

He was barely eight days old when the pain began that would ultimately wind him up on a cross, marked as a anti-Jewish criminal who showed himself the King of Jews, the man for everyone, the man for Andy, thoroughly non-Jewish, who never learned Hebrew well, who struggles with the Prophets and the Psalms, and who—to this day—has a hard time figuring out what an authentic life with the radical Jew Lord Jesus really means from a domesticated, basically urban, American point of view.

For me January 1, Feast of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus, means that I am more and more somehow called to be wonderfully Jewish--to think prophetically Jewish about injustice and poverty--in order to live with Jewish Jesus. So I pray today that my Jewish Lord fills me up with his Jewishness--his uncommon prophet, redemptive Jewishness--so that my heart is circumcised even as he was circumcised both in body and in heart.

Images: “The Circumcision of Jesus”, The Cloisters, New York; A mohel (a ritual circumciser) carries out the circumcision of a boy on the eighth day after birth; The Circumcision; Simon BENING; 1525; tempera and gold on parchment; from Cardinal Albert von Brandenburg’s Book of Prayers; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The Circumcision; workshop of Giovanni BELLINI; 1500; oil on wood; National Gallery, London; Jesus as a Boy