A precious few are waiting for the next BababaBobalog post.  I have been absent for about a month due to picking up a second job helping my lovely wife, Michelle, and her partner open up a restaurant in Augusta, Kentucky…more on that another time.

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The unfortunate thing is my planning is notoriously poor.  I write nothing for weeks and then my first post in forever is about circumcision.  Whose bright idea was that?  After all this is Christmas, surely I could write some syrupy anecdote about a holiday event.  No, that would be too easy, too safe, too “normal” so I calendared circumcision.  One of these days I am going to get the sack!

I cannot take all the blame.  The writers of the gospels should share in some of this indignity.  After all what did they leave us with? 

We have the announcement of the birth of the Savior of the world, very appropriate.  A few scenes during the days leading up to the blessed Advent, fair enough. A skimpy birth narrative, with which we have done much. A visit to the Temple for the circumcision rite and blessings from Anna and Simeon, ok if you are into religion. A visit from the magi, then the flight to Egypt and return to Nazareth, exciting but not much in the way of narrative.  The Messiah is twelve the next we hear of him (one Temple scene), then nothing until he is an adult. 

Slim pickings, if you ask me.   In lieu of the historical scarcity, the recorded events of Jesus’ early life must be all the more important.  From my point of view, the question is begged, “why record the circumcision at all?”.  The answer is discovered in connecting Jesus to the redemptive work of God throughout the ages; a connection that takes the inquirer all the way back to Genesis and the call to Abram to “get up and go.”

My friends at Main Street and I will be considering the connection (by circumcision) this weekend.