Marked with His Name
Marked with His Name
New Year’s Day Sermon
Luke 2:21
I’ll never forget the weeks before I went away to camp for the summer. You know what my mother was busy doing those days? Sewing. Now, you have to know my mother. She hated to sew. It was one of those jobs she detested. Ironing she loved. Doing dishes—she thought that was fun. Laundry—oh, that was joy to her heart. She was a rare blessing! But sewing? Not for her. She used to say, “Ladies like to sew, and I am no lady.” But sew she did during those weeks. Can you guess what she was sewing?
My name. Little labels with my name on it were sewn into just about everything I was taking to camp. My name was sewn on my coat and jackets, my sweaters and shirts, my sweats, and even my underwear. Mom was taking no chances.
Now, why did she do that? Why plaster “Gerry” across all that stuff? Well, to mark that “stuff” as belonging to me, to make sure that no one made off with my T-shirts or sweatpants when I did my laundry in the dorm. We put our name on things to mark them as our own.
Guess what? God does the same thing. He puts his name down to mark his property. “Wait a minute,” I can hear you say, “everything belongs to God; it’s all his.” “The earth is the LORD’S and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Ps 24:1). Wouldn’t that mean his name would have to be plastered across all creation?
It is true that everything belongs to God, but it’s also true that God himself has some special possessions, some properties that seem dearer to his heart than others. Think of the temple in Jerusalem. That place was very special to God because it was where he promised to be for his people so they could find him, come and pray to him, and receive his forgiving love. And so the Old Testament speaks of the temple as the place where God’s name dwells. Every building on earth is God’s own. But that building was a special building because that’s where God promised to come and meet his people to bless them.
Tomorrow is the official church celebration of the circumcision of Mary’s Son. It was at a Jewish boy’s circumcision that he also officially received his name. If you read carefully the Christmas story in Luke’s Gospel, you’ll find that the child was not called by the name “Jesus” until the name was set on him at his circumcision. Circumcision and naming went together in the old covenant. Both were ways of “marking” a person as being in a special relationship to the God of Israel. The Child of Mary is marked off with the name “Jesus”—”Yahweh saves!”—because he would save his people from their sins.
So already the eight-day-old child is set upon the road that will lead through the sufferings of Calvary, the stony silence of the tomb, and the jubilation of Easter morning. The child has come to be the one who will achieve salvation, open a road home to his Father for all of us, and then give us the gift of walking that road.
And how does he give it? How has God ever given salvation? Why, always with his name. He puts his name on someone, and that someone ceases to belong to God in general but instead belongs to God in specific as a precious and prized possession. “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Mt 28:19-20). Jesus, the Savior, is with us, for we have been baptized into his name. In our Baptism we are his, now and forever. The whole rest of Christian life is just unpacking the joy of what it means to live life and die death as one who belongs specially to the triune God—what it means to live under the promise and mark of God’s holy name, as a person walking home to the Father.
Wherever God puts his name, there he puts his blessing. The priests in the old covenant were given special words by God to put on the people. The words were not empty words. No, since they come from God, they were alive with his presence and his blessing. “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace” (Num 6:24–26).
If such a blessing held true for the old covenant people, marked with the sign of circumcision, how much more does it hold true for us who have been marked with nothing less than the triune name at Jesus’ command in water. The Lord, the Lord, the Lord. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The action is all his. He is the one who blesses us. He is the one who keeps us. He is the one whose face beams at us in delight. He is the one who graces us with unmerited good. He is the one who looks upon us and regards us with love as the individuals that we are, and so he is the one who gives us peace. Every time that blessing is used in the service we are being recalled to our Baptism.
But that powerful act of the triune God also proclaims our mission as the church. The church baptizes in that holy name. Christ gives us the joy of placing his name on all people with water and therefore marking them as his own treasured and prized possessions. The very same blessings he gives to us he gives to all who are called by his name.
A new year! There can be no better way to enter the new year than to remember with rejoicing that
God Has Marked Us As His Very Own.
Like my mom sewing my name on my stuff so I wouldn’t lose my possessions, he has put his triune name on us with all its blessings so that we might never be lost, but belong to him forever. Peter was right: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet 2:9). Now, there’s a resolution worthy of a new year! We, people marked as God’s own, will declare to all the world praises of the one who called us out of darkness into his awesome light.