INTRODUCTION:

By the way our calendar is set up, the eighth day after Christmas will always be New Year’s Day.  It’s probably a good thing that a new year rolls around every 365 days, because in most cases (especially if it’s been a long and difficult year), people usually think it’s a pretty good thing to get a fresh start.  What’s probably not such a good thing is to think that the eighth day after Christmas (NY’s Day) can somehow enable a person to drop bad habits and all of a sudden make necessary improvements – why? Because the number of the calendar year has increased by one?  That’s gonna do it?  Really?  You think?

There would seem to be some merit in re-examining history, because in the Christian Church in generations past, the eighth day after Christmas had a noticeably different emphasis.  Eight days after the day on which you remembered Jesus’ birth was obviously still New Year’s Day, but that eighth day after Christmas was also recognized as the day on which you remembered Jesus’ circumcision on the eighth day of his life and the official naming ceremony that went along with it.  If we want to get a fresh start on a new year and think about having a long-lasting resolve to live more for God than we have been, then the Christian Festival for the eighth day after Christmas called The Name Of Jesus packs a lot more punch than the secular holiday called New Year’s Day.  

For a good start to a better year, look at a brief bit of outpatient surgery, listen to the name that is given, and bear in mind that the things that happened to Jesus on the eighth day of his life were really all about you.

They were!  When you take a seat in God’s house, God’s Word slices through every unconcerned blow-off, every really-good-reason-you-had-for-doing-what-you-did, every lame, blame-it-on-something-else excuse.  God says, “With your every sinful thought and deed, you looked me in the face and said, ‘No! Not thy will; mine be done.’”  When our actions say, “I want to do what I want, and I don’t want to hear about the trouble I’m going to get in for it,” how frightful is God’s response: “Fine, see what it gets you”?

Jesus once spoke about the punishment people can expect when they do what their gut tells them instead of what their God tells them.  “Throw him into jail to be tortured until he has paid off the last penny.”  Now of course that means unending punishment, because if you need to pay off a huge debt (and our sin-debt is huge), prison is not the place where you’ll ever be able to do it. 

God’s looking for compliance and we give him disobedience.  The punishment from God that fits our crime is well-defined and well-deserved.  A sincere and well-meaning resolution or two does not make this matter go away. 

Now look at the brief bit of surgery that took place on the eighth day after Jesus’ birth.  God was looking for compliance from us, and his Son gave him the obedience he was looking for.  From his circumcision on the eighth day of his life (as the law required) to the unjust but non-rebellious suffering on the last day of his life, and including everything in-between – all of his life was nothing but “Yes, Father, Thy will be done.”  This is your rescue – right at the beginning of it.  From early on and all the way through, Jesus obeyed for you.

If he’s to be your substitute under God’s law, doing for you everything God required of you, he had to be completely responsible for you.  He had to assume any obligations you had, any debts you had, specifically that unpayable sin-debt that would land you in the eternal debtor’s prison of hell.  On the eighth day after his birth, you can catch a glimpse of the earnest money that he was putting down on paying off that debt – the first shedding of his blood.  There would be more bloodshed, when his life was cut off at the age of 33 years, and his holy blood shed on a cross paid off the whole debt for your sins.

Jesus’ eighth day was the day when he formally and officially took up the task of obeying all of God’s law for you and showed that he would shed holy blood for you.  Perhaps with the crying that was produced by that procedure audible in the background, Joseph then carried out his God-given role as guardian.  He followed the angel’s instruction and would have said, “His name is Jesus.”

On this New Year’s Day we think about what everyone else thinks about today – a new start to a new year and our various personal desires or resolutions for how it will be a better year.  But on this January 1, we also observe and celebrate the festival called -

The Name Of Jesus

What a perfect fit that festival is for this day.  Jesus, the only one who ever obeyed God’s law, the only one whose blood could pay off a debt of guilt, the one who saves his people from their sins – the coverage I have with that name!  The name Joseph gave to Mary’s son tells me that God has forgiven and forgotten every sinful thing about me from this moment in time, both backward to the moment of my conception and forward to the moment of my final breath.  How about that for a fresh start!

The name Joseph gave to Mary’s son is described by St. Peter as the only name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.  That name is described by St. Paul as the name which is above every name.  No one bowed when Joseph named Jesus, but every knee will bow when he appears as the judge of the living and the dead and the herald angels cry out: His name is Jesus.  God shared that saving name and all that it means with you and me – the reverence I have for that name!

I certainly have no argument with resolutions that begin on January 1st.  Can we remember, though, that resolutions aren’t made for resolution’s sake, that we’re not going to try to be good for goodness’ sake, that resolutions that may begin on this day are not simply this-will-make-me-a-better-person resolutions?  This Jesus, by the grace of God, is my Lord and Master.  Having paid for me with his blood, he holds title to me.  He owns me.  He has put his name on me.    The resolve I gain from bearing his name – it’s like nothing else. I am willing and grateful to be his slave.  The resolutions I make, whatever they are, are made to honor and thank him, and he helps me keep them, forgives me when I fall, and makes me want to keep making them and keeping them all year long. 

My friends... On the 1st of January, the name of Jesus makes this the first day of a great new year!

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