The LCA provides this sermon edited for lay-reading, with thanks to the original author.

Name of Jesus

Luke 2:21, Matthew 1:20-21

Most of us will have a copy of last year’s calendar somewhere in our house. If you have, I encourage you to have a look at it when you get home. As you do, think about all the things you've done this year and all that’s happened. You'll probably find you had many happy days - holidays, parties, and other special times marked on your calendar. You might be reminded of sad times, unfinished business or situations which taught you something about yourself or those around you.

A new calendar starts today, 1 January 2011.Yours is probably still pretty blank and empty. I'm sure it will fill up quickly. As we begin the new year we realise there is a lot of the old we want to take with us - good things we've learnt, good memories, good experiences.

There is also a lot of the old year that we don't want to take with us. Things we may be ashamed of. Days when we were disappointed or hurt. Days when we remember arguments and problems in relationships.

We start the new year with a fresh, clean calendar. The year is only one day old. Yet we know that life is a mixture. And it won't take long before that mix is again part of our lives. Joys, good times with family and friends, but also the fruit of selfish pride and carelessness in human relationships.

The church has never just begun a new year with new year resolutions. It hasn't gathered the congregation together every New Year's Day and just said, well, you all try and do better next year. The church doesn't work like the world. It doesn't begin with human effort or rely on human effort to improve things.

Actually, the church doesn't have great confidence in the world or in the ability of human beings to change the way things are. The church believes only God can make a difference. Only God can renew and recreate and give new starts to new years.

For that reason the church has always begun the new year in the name of Jesus. If we are to have any hope for this new year, if we are to leave behind the guilt and shame of last year, if we are to be able to look forward with confidence, it is because of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father and our Saviour.

On New Year's Day the church throughout the ages has celebrated the festival of the naming of Jesus and the circumcision of Jesus. Today, while we think about the past year and look to the new year, we do so in the name of Jesus.

Today is the eighth day after the celebration of the birth of Jesus. The eighth day for Mary and Joseph, being Jews, meant the circumcising of their male child and his official naming. Mary and Joseph were devout. They didn't abandon God's law but began the process of Jesus fulfilling the law and keeping it perfectly. We read about the naming of Jesus:

An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:20-21).

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived (Luke 2:21).

His name is Jesus. In Hebrew, Joshua. In Hebrew the name meant Jehovah (God) will save, or, the salvation of the Lord. So from the apostle Matthew we hear the explanation, you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save people from their sins.

He is Jesus. And he is the Christ. In Greek, Christus, in Hebrew, the Messiah, the anointed one. Prophets and priests and kings were set apart for their special work by anointing with oil. The anointed one was the king of Israel.

In the Gospel of John Jesus is acknowledged by the apostles Andrew and Nathaniel as the anointed one, the Christ, from the very beginning of his public ministry. (John 1:41,49). Jesus is the king of Israel and he gives his people the keys to his kingdom, the power to forgive and retain sins.

The naming of the child of Bethlehem ought to claim our attention as we begin a new year. It is not just the name, but the power of that name that grips us. In John's Gospel Jesus says, I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it (John 14:13,14). And the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name (John 15:16), a promise he repeats also in the next chapter of the Gospel of John (16:23).

The name of Jesus is the name through which we have access to our heavenly Father. It is the name of the Son of the Father and the name of our Saviour.

So in the liturgy, the pastor says, dear Christian friends, let us draw near to God our Father with a true heart to confess our sins, and ask him in the name of our Lord Jesus to forgive us. And then using the words of Psalm 124:8 we are encouraged with the thought, Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

And remember the words addressed to us, do you believe that Jesus Christ has redeemed you from all your sins and do you desire forgiveness in his name?

And then pastor stands on behalf of Christ and in his place and forgives us all our sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

This name is very significant for us.

In him we have confidence to approach our heavenly Father, on account of him we have confidence that our sin has been forgiven, and from him we receive that word of forgiveness which enables us to live each new day, each new week, each new year.

Jesus came to save sinners like you and I. Not to destroy us, but to save us. Not to wipe us out and start again each year, but to forgive us.

As individuals we may look back over the past year with some sense of guilt and shame.

As a congregation we may look back and have that same sense of guilt and shame.

Missed opportunities to share the Gospel with some people, a lack of care for those who are really needy in our community, a failure to gladly heard the Word and God and learn it.

There were some meetings when we failed to achieve very much and perhaps even hurt one another with our words. There are disappointments and hurts - so many people so casual about receiving the sacrament, bibles unopened and unused, self centred prayer life that fails to pray for the world and for those who cannot or will not pray for themselves.

These things hurt and disappoint and can hang around our collective neck weighing us down as we seek to enter a new year with joy and hope and expectation.

But of course they don't need to. Jesus Christ suffered on the cross for those sins. He knows human nature. He knows our failures. He knows the wages of sin is death. And that culture of death would go with us and haunt us into every new year without his help.

So he gave himself for you and me and for this congregation. He died that we might receive forgiveness of sins and with it new life for the new year.

We can begin the new year full of joy and hope and expectation, because we begin it with confession and we begin it hearing the good news of the absolution, your sins are forgiven for Jesus' sake. And as we know, where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.

Forgiven by God and renewed by him we are confident to face a new year.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.