Year after Year, Always More Gifts
Forty years ago, on the threshold of the 1980s, Dr. Norman Nagel was asked what those coming years would hold for the Lutheran Liturgy. He answered in a way that was so typical of his whole evangelical theology: “As always,” he said, “there would be God’s giving of His gifts.” Always more gifts, sometimes more than we can manage, an embarrassment of riches. But still the Lord our God continues giving, and what He bestows upon His people is nothing less than Himself.
Of course, anything can be turned into a cliché, and all of its nuances may be flattened into abstract generalities. But Dr. Nagel had it right. For such is the grace of God, that He pours Himself out — the Father in the Son, the Spirit by the Savior — so that His divine eternal Life becomes yours, that you might live forever in His Love, and that you should be a son of God in Christ Jesus.
Although it does not yet appear what all of this means, and though you cannot fully comprehend its significance because it exceeds your imagination, hopes, and dreams, there is nothing abstract or generic about this Life and Sonship which the Lord has given to you in Holy Baptism.
St. Paul elsewhere describes your Baptism as a circumcision made without hands. And today you have heard him say that, by your Baptism into Christ, you have become a descendant of Abraham, an heir of all the promises that God gave to Abraham — the promises He sealed unto him, in his flesh, by the covenant of circumcision. Thus are you blessed by God, and you inherit, not simply a plot of land in Palestine, but a sure and certain place in Paradise with all the saints in Light.
Your Holy Baptism unites you with Christ in His Cross and Resurrection, and it clothes you with His righteousness and holiness, so that everything that belongs to Him now also belongs to you. Just as He, first of all, by His circumcision became the recipient of God’s promises to Abraham.
The Lord Jesus lives by faith in those promises, as the true Man, but He is also their fulfillment as the promised Seed of Abraham. He is the very One to whom the covenant pointed: God’s Word in the Flesh. The indignity He suffers and the blood that He sheds in His circumcision will be fulfilled in the suffering and death of His Cross. He thereby makes Atonement for the sins of the world, and He reconciles the world to God, so that in His Resurrection God justifies the world with the righteousness of His dear Son. That is what He gives to you by grace in your Holy Baptism.
Neither your Baptism nor circumcision were ever intended as works by which man would justify himself before the Lord God. They are rather the sacramental signs and seals of God’s Word and promises, all of which are fulfilled in Christ Jesus. He is subject to the Law of circumcision, so that, in His own flesh and blood, the covenant is completed and established for you and for all. That is to say, He is the Son of Abraham who receives everything God swore to give to Abraham, and in His Resurrection those gifts become the possession of all who are baptized into Him.
The promise is there already in the Name of Jesus, which God gave by the angel Gabriel. Like the Son of God Himself, this precious holy Name is also a pure gift of divine grace. It confesses that Yahweh saves His people from their sins, and that the Baby conceived and born of St. Mary is Yawheh in the flesh. Both God Himself and His promise become flesh and blood, for the Word of God from all eternity now in time becomes true Man. Therefore, not only in Holy Baptism, but also in the Holy Communion, the promise of salvation is given to you in the flesh of Jesus Christ.
As the promise and the flesh of God are one and the same in the Person of Christ Jesus, so are you redeemed and saved in both your body and your soul — in your flesh and blood, and so also in your soul and spirit. That has significance for the way in which you love and serve your neighbor with your body, in view of the fact that your body shall be raised from death and the grave to the Life everlasting. What you receive and do with your body matters, because your body shall be raised up and glorified forever in the Body of Christ Jesus.
As He received His Name at His circumcision, so have you received His Name in your Baptism. Not that you are called “Jesus,” but that He and His salvation have become yours by His grace. In naming you with His own Name — that of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — He truly conveys Himself and His Life to you. His face thereby shines upon you, without scaring you to death! He blesses you with His Glory, not for destruction but for Life. And He grants you real Peace through His forgiveness of your sins. For where sins are forgiven and God Himself does not condemn you, there is no longer any fear of death, but only grace, mercy, and peace, and life and salvation.
And all of that is what the Lord Jesus has accomplished for you. He is as good as His Name. By His Cross and Resurrection He has saved His people from their sins, and now He brings them into the safety of eternal Life with His God and Father in heaven. This is what your Baptism has given to you, to start with, and no less so the preaching of the Gospel.
It is through such speaking of His Word that the Lord your God blesses you and keeps you in His true Peace, both now and forever. It is through this speaking of His Word that He keeps on giving more gifts, which culminate and center in this Holy Sacrament of His Body and His Blood. In this eating and drinking of Christ, you are living already in the eternal Eighth Day of His Resurrection and of the Life everlasting.
Which puts this New Year of His grace and the ensuing 2020s into the proper perspective of eternity, along with each and every day and night of your life on earth. For you are the Lord’s, and your Life and Salvation are safe and secure in Him, today, tomorrow, and forever.
In the holy Name of Jesus. Amen.