PrayerAbiding with you forever in glory, O God, your only-begotten child is born among us in time.. May we ever welcome your Son to the warmth of an earthly home and so open for all earth's children a path that leads us home. We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Some Thoughts on Luke 2:1-20
"This holiday familiarity is a particular problem for preachers. We must keep in mind that for some, the Christmas story has been regularly heard since childhood. And yet, these annual rehearsals have failed to reveal to contemporary audiences the jarring display of ancient culture the episode describes."
Commentary, Luke 2:1-14 [15-20] / Luke 2[1-7] 8-20, Joy Moore, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
"Nonetheless, it is to these unlikely and unworthy shepherds that the first news of the birth of Jesus is given, and not to the Kings, Caesars, and Governors mentioned at the beginning of this passage."
Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Luke 2:1-20, David Ewart, 2010.
"This holiday familiarity is a particular problem for preachers. We must keep in mind that for some, the Christmas story has been regularly heard since childhood. And yet, these annual rehearsals have failed to reveal to contemporary audiences the jarring display of ancient culture the episode describes."
Commentary, Luke 2:1-14 [15-20] / Luke 2[1-7] 8-20, Joy Moore, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
"Nonetheless, it is to these unlikely and unworthy shepherds that the first news of the birth of Jesus is given, and not to the Kings, Caesars, and Governors mentioned at the beginning of this passage."
Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Luke 2:1-20, David Ewart, 2010.
Today, we pause, we think, and we ponder. What is the world around us like? What are our lives like? We live in a time when we want to know God is present. We desire to be rid of our fear and our anxiety. We hope, and we wish for a sign. We don't know who to believe anymore because everything is relativized. There seems no assurance that we won't hurdle off the fiscal and mental cliff of our time. We feel shame and unworthiness, which we hide behind consumption and business. We still long for some kind of love, acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding. And, we offer our sacrifices to the God of our day, hoping perhaps this year will be different.
I am most certain that this is not the same time and nor are these the same issues that faced the shepherds. They were probably cold, hungry, and without shelter in the desert at night. They were most likely a lot like most of the rest of the developing world that exists far beyond our concerns and thoughts this Christmas.
Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:11to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.12This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
And
so all over the world, we gather on this holiest of nights to celebrate the mystical
union of God and humanity in Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us, Savior,
Messiah, Blessed One, Son of Man, Jesus the Christ Child born of a woman called
Mary – Miryam of Nazareth.
I have for a long time been touched by this mystical poem from
Ann Johnson’s collection of sacred poetry Magnificat of
the Stable:
My soul rests confidently in the animal warmth
And the lantern light of the simple place, Yahweh,
And the lantern light of the simple place, Yahweh,
And my spirit rejoices in the privacy of this time of birthing
We share with you, O God of Creation,
For you come alive again tonight
In the blood and water of your people.
Yes, this is the time we have waited for.
This is the moment of blessing.
Holy is birth,
And you shall show yourself from age to age
In those who enter into creation with you.
You have shown the power of a dream enfleshed
And we are humbled.
You have pulled down all our strivings
And lifted up this simple, common moment.
This stable is filled with good things,
New life and happy people.
Are those in the inn rooms as satisfied?
We share with you, O God of Creation,
For you come alive again tonight
In the blood and water of your people.
Yes, this is the time we have waited for.
This is the moment of blessing.
Holy is birth,
And you shall show yourself from age to age
In those who enter into creation with you.
You have shown the power of a dream enfleshed
And we are humbled.
You have pulled down all our strivings
And lifted up this simple, common moment.
This stable is filled with good things,
New life and happy people.
Are those in the inn rooms as satisfied?
You have come to Israel,
Mindful of our shared nature,
. . . according to the promise of Eden. . .
mindful of our nature to seek the wisdom of new life together
as long as we walk the earth.[2]
Mindful of our shared nature,
. . . according to the promise of Eden. . .
mindful of our nature to seek the wisdom of new life together
as long as we walk the earth.[2]
Rehearsing our sacred story reminds us of God's presence in our lives. We are invited to this holy feast to remember that this God we believe in enters the world in human form and comes to the margins of life, to Mary and Joseph, who are essentially homeless and wandering.
We are invited on this day to retell the story of the nativity so that we may rehearse the beginning of the reign of God, where people without a coat are given clothing, where people with no roof over their heads find shelter, where people with nothing to eat are given good things. We retell the story to remind ourselves that the work of Christians is kindness, gentleness, and hospitality, like the innkeeper.
We are invited to retell the story on this day so we remember what it means to discover a living God and how we, like the shepherds, will search for him wherever he will be; so tenacious is our hearts' hunger for God.
For those who intentionally choose to remember, we recognize that the birth of Jesus was a prophetic challenge to the world order and that those who find they're being in his sacred story and follow his way are to challenge the world order with ethical and moral sensitivity. We are to speak the truth
and act in a world hungering for deliverance from greed, poverty, oppression,
malnutrition, abuse, illness, war, and all the other dark and evil powers we
have created and come to know. It is not to Caesar Augustus or Quirinius that this God comes to, but the God we believe in comes to the lowly. So it is that we are to open our hearts to this God that our own lowliness and shame may be transformed. So it is that we are to open our hands and lives to those around us. We are like the angels, the shepherds, the innkeeper, and the holy family to make room for this God in our lives and, in so doing, to make room in the world for the kingdom of God.
Some Thoughts on John 1:1-18
"If last week we met the camel hair wearing, locust and honey eating John the Baptist, this week we do a 180 degree turn and meet a whole different John."
Commentary, John 1:6-8, 19-28, Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
"Much of the pain and suffering around us comes from people imagining that they are the light themselves. In psychological terms, my mind turns to Carl Jung when thinking about light and darkness within us. Jung warned of the dangers of trying to live only in our light. The shadow within is dangerous when ignored."
John 1:6-8, 19-28, Rev. Todd Weir, bloomingcactus.
Commentary, John 1:6-8, 19-28, Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
"Much of the pain and suffering around us comes from people imagining that they are the light themselves. In psychological terms, my mind turns to Carl Jung when thinking about light and darkness within us. Jung warned of the dangers of trying to live only in our light. The shadow within is dangerous when ignored."
John 1:6-8, 19-28, Rev. Todd Weir, bloomingcactus.
Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text
Who are you? I can tell you who I am by telling you my life story. Ultimately, you will guess it by my clothes and by my car and by my house...the rings on my fingers and bells on my toes. Today's Gospel lesson asks, who are you?
To get to the bottom of this, we must take a good look at what is going on this week in the Gospel Text, especially since we have taken a dog leg into John's Gospel from Mark!
This week's Gospel reading is really in two parts. Those of you preparing a sermon (if doing so on this text) will find that it is really two different parts of John's introduction. The text for Sunday is 1:6-8 and 19-28.
The first piece falls well within what many scholars believe to be the greatest part of the New Testament. Raymond Brown, in his first volume, writes this about the prologue, which stretches from 1:1-18.
To summarize then, we have in the first two verses of our reading a very clear focus on God in Christ. Jesus is the Word, Jesus is the Word made manifest, and the Word at work in the world. As if marching to a drum, we hear for the first time in these very first words what we have faithfully memorized as Christians and Episcopalians who have a Common Prayer Book, and that is that the only Son of God has come into the world to save the world. Such comfortable and hopeful words. Everything in this first section of our reading verbally illustrates that John the baptist is someone they knew but now is so transparent to the Gospel that all they see now is the coming of Christ.
On the first day of John's ministry in the Gospel, he disappears as the living Word and Jesus take centre stage. On the second day, he offers a vision of who Jesus is; he is the transparent vessel of a living Christ - of light in the world.
In this third week of Advent, a number of things are going on in our context here in the U.S. One is what I would call the holiday breather. We began the holiday with a Thanksgiving mad dash to fill our bellies and our shopping carts. We redoubled our efforts to get to church. And we are now in the slump; it is the week-long Wednesday between Holiday and Christmas Day. Unfortunately, preachers are in the same predicament.
Into this slump, we re-read a passage about John the Baptist. Now, you and I both know that is not precisely true. This Sunday's passage is very different from the last. Brown and practically all modern scholars recognize that John the Baptist in John's Gospel is completely different from the one portrayed in the Synoptics. He looks different than the previous version we preached on last week. This week he is the transparent vessel of God's grace - Jesus Christ. He points only to God and to Jesus.
Just as John the Baptist in John's Gospel, you and I are, as Christians, intimately tied to who we say God is.
You might remember Stephen Colbert's radical statement that caused so much attention recently:
The truth is that as Christians, we proclaim and reaffirm that the pre-existent Word of God is Jesus Christ, who is God's only son. And that we are, as a people and as individuals (as is proclaimed in the Isaiah passage for this Sunday), inheritors of a divine relationship with the unseen God through the waters of baptism. And, that we DO believe we are related as brothers or sisters of God's family. And, therefore we are to treat people in a certain way, with special attention to God's most intimate friends - the poor.
We say and affirm as a defining part of who we are that we, as Christians, believe we meet God in the text of scripture and in the faces of our neighbours.
We meet God in John's proclamation. We meet this unseen God in the very speaking and retelling of the story of the incarnation of God offered here on the other side of the Jordan, just as it is offered from the ambos and pulpits of our churches.
Moreover, like John, we meet God by venturing out across the doorway of our church onto the other side of the sidewalk, where we have the opportunity to meet the living Word in the storied lives of the people we find out in the world. We encounter God and his Son in the words of scripture, which helps us to hear the same living incarnate God spoken in the story of our neighbour.
This week we did a bible study with this passage at our meeting of the governing board of the diocese. A friend and fellow clergyman said he had been praying and thinking about this passage. He realized and offered to the group that, quite frankly, we were simply to be at work being witnesses to Christ (like John the Baptist and John the Gospeller), and if we were not, then we were being witnesses for something or someone else. In the latter, he had in mind those folks who travelled all that way to meet John the Baptist in the desert and to shut him down for not bearing witness to what they stood for.
This religious stuff is a dangerous thing. The world right now is taking a breather from its holiday consumption. It is quiet before the holiday storm. We have an opportunity to tell the truth. The truth is that how we live out our holiday will reveal if we are bearing witness to God in Christ Jesus, or if we are representing something else. Yes, what we say and what we do are incarnational symbols of the living God or something else entirely.
Religion on a Sunday like this is dangerous because when we don't tell the truth about the world we live in (the addictions we have, the way we attempt to purchase our belongings, and how we are stewards of God's things), we sell a little piece of our corporate soul to the secular world; creating a consumer faith.
How will the church, how will you, the preacher, how will the people answer the essential question asked on the shore of the Jordan River so many years ago, and which is still relevant today: "Who are you because you look like someone I once knew?"
As I walked out on the streets of Laredo, As I walked out in Laredo one day, I spied a young cowboy all wrapped in white linen Wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay. I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy; I see by your outfit you are a cowboy, too; We see by our outfits that we are both cowboys. If you get an outfit, you can be a cowboy, too. (listen to it here)I grew up listening to the Smothers Brothers, and this was their version of The Streets of Laredo. I have always loved it.
Who are you? I can tell you who I am by telling you my life story. Ultimately, you will guess it by my clothes and by my car and by my house...the rings on my fingers and bells on my toes. Today's Gospel lesson asks, who are you?
To get to the bottom of this, we must take a good look at what is going on this week in the Gospel Text, especially since we have taken a dog leg into John's Gospel from Mark!
This week's Gospel reading is really in two parts. Those of you preparing a sermon (if doing so on this text) will find that it is really two different parts of John's introduction. The text for Sunday is 1:6-8 and 19-28.
The first piece falls well within what many scholars believe to be the greatest part of the New Testament. Raymond Brown, in his first volume, writes this about the prologue, which stretches from 1:1-18.
"If John has been described as the pearl of great price among the NT writings, then one may say that the Prologue is the pearl within this Gospel. In her ccomparisonof Augustine's and Chrysostom's exegesis of the Prologue, M. A. Aucoin points out that both held that it is beyond the power of man to speak as John does in the Prologue." (18)I think it is important to think of these first verses well within this first piece of writing which has both a form and a purpose. Brown breaks it up this way... The first section is 1:1-2, This is the Word of God section which offers a poetic vision of God's very being. The second section, verses 3-5, reveals the Word's work in creation. It is the light shining in the darkness, shining through man's sinfulness, shining in the birth that flows from the fallen woman Eve in Jesus. Then, and only then, do we arrive at our piece, which is nestled quite nicely here. The third portion is verses 6-9 and is John the Baptist's, witness. As Brown points out the second part is about the Word's work throughout creation, here that comes to fruition in the proclamation of God's incarnate Word Jesus. (Brown, John, vol 1, 18-17) Many bloggers this week noted the difference between the John of Mark and the John of this Gospel. I think the reason for the striking difference is primarily this Gospel's tightly focused presentation of God in Christ Jesus. The only reason to even have John in this section is to make clear he is preparing the hearts of humankind for the incarnation, and proclamation of the Word made man. Brown tells us that following this proclamation, we return to the fourth section (continuing the ancient hymn outlined in the text), which is about the Christ of God working his mission in the world. This is followed by the community's response. The last of the five sections is another few words by John the Baptist, but here in 14, 17-18, is John's proclamation that the Word spoken before time is this Jesus. He is the pre-existent one. A radical, revolutionary, and prophetic revelation is being offered in this last section, for in this time, the common person would have understood that God is invisible, so it makes sense that the Word spoken, the Son is the only one who has seen this God. The unique relation between Son and God not only helps with the contemporary thought of the day but it gives rise to our common understanding of who Jesus is: God's only Son. (For my theological followers, there is a great discussion in Brown's Vol 1 on pages 35 and 36 about this last section, and it is well worth reading.)
To summarize then, we have in the first two verses of our reading a very clear focus on God in Christ. Jesus is the Word, Jesus is the Word made manifest, and the Word at work in the world. As if marching to a drum, we hear for the first time in these very first words what we have faithfully memorized as Christians and Episcopalians who have a Common Prayer Book, and that is that the only Son of God has come into the world to save the world. Such comfortable and hopeful words. Everything in this first section of our reading verbally illustrates that John the baptist is someone they knew but now is so transparent to the Gospel that all they see now is the coming of Christ.
On the first day of John's ministry in the Gospel, he disappears as the living Word and Jesus take centre stage. On the second day, he offers a vision of who Jesus is; he is the transparent vessel of a living Christ - of light in the world.
In this third week of Advent, a number of things are going on in our context here in the U.S. One is what I would call the holiday breather. We began the holiday with a Thanksgiving mad dash to fill our bellies and our shopping carts. We redoubled our efforts to get to church. And we are now in the slump; it is the week-long Wednesday between Holiday and Christmas Day. Unfortunately, preachers are in the same predicament.
Into this slump, we re-read a passage about John the Baptist. Now, you and I both know that is not precisely true. This Sunday's passage is very different from the last. Brown and practically all modern scholars recognize that John the Baptist in John's Gospel is completely different from the one portrayed in the Synoptics. He looks different than the previous version we preached on last week. This week he is the transparent vessel of God's grace - Jesus Christ. He points only to God and to Jesus.
Just as John the Baptist in John's Gospel, you and I are, as Christians, intimately tied to who we say God is.
You might remember Stephen Colbert's radical statement that caused so much attention recently:
"If [America] is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it."I will tell you that not being who we say we are is a crippling missionary stumbling block in a world that is seeking some kind of authentic view of God and Grace and hoping someone will be a true voice of transformation and life in a world of gifts and purchases whose shimmer and shine will fade a few weeks after their delivery.
The truth is that as Christians, we proclaim and reaffirm that the pre-existent Word of God is Jesus Christ, who is God's only son. And that we are, as a people and as individuals (as is proclaimed in the Isaiah passage for this Sunday), inheritors of a divine relationship with the unseen God through the waters of baptism. And, that we DO believe we are related as brothers or sisters of God's family. And, therefore we are to treat people in a certain way, with special attention to God's most intimate friends - the poor.
We say and affirm as a defining part of who we are that we, as Christians, believe we meet God in the text of scripture and in the faces of our neighbours.
We meet God in John's proclamation. We meet this unseen God in the very speaking and retelling of the story of the incarnation of God offered here on the other side of the Jordan, just as it is offered from the ambos and pulpits of our churches.
Moreover, like John, we meet God by venturing out across the doorway of our church onto the other side of the sidewalk, where we have the opportunity to meet the living Word in the storied lives of the people we find out in the world. We encounter God and his Son in the words of scripture, which helps us to hear the same living incarnate God spoken in the story of our neighbour.
This week we did a bible study with this passage at our meeting of the governing board of the diocese. A friend and fellow clergyman said he had been praying and thinking about this passage. He realized and offered to the group that, quite frankly, we were simply to be at work being witnesses to Christ (like John the Baptist and John the Gospeller), and if we were not, then we were being witnesses for something or someone else. In the latter, he had in mind those folks who travelled all that way to meet John the Baptist in the desert and to shut him down for not bearing witness to what they stood for.
This religious stuff is a dangerous thing. The world right now is taking a breather from its holiday consumption. It is quiet before the holiday storm. We have an opportunity to tell the truth. The truth is that how we live out our holiday will reveal if we are bearing witness to God in Christ Jesus, or if we are representing something else. Yes, what we say and what we do are incarnational symbols of the living God or something else entirely.
Religion on a Sunday like this is dangerous because when we don't tell the truth about the world we live in (the addictions we have, the way we attempt to purchase our belongings, and how we are stewards of God's things), we sell a little piece of our corporate soul to the secular world; creating a consumer faith.
How will the church, how will you, the preacher, how will the people answer the essential question asked on the shore of the Jordan River so many years ago, and which is still relevant today: "Who are you because you look like someone I once knew?"
Some Thoughts on Titus 2:11-14
"Living zealously, wisely, righteously, godly, and expectantly may, in some situations, appear as gentleness and align with the general mores of the wider society. At other times, however, that way of life may manifest as boldness and challenge to the narrative of the good life the present culture embraces."
Commentary, Titus 2:11-14, Amy L.B. Peeler, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"This passage stands out as a theological gem in the midst of the moral exhortations of Titus."Commentary, Titus 2:11-14, Elisabeth Johnson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
In the Epistle lesson from Titus, Paul is writing about the household code, a moral code by which the church is to live. They are to be a community. This community is to be acceptable to the society around it, and most scholars see parallels between Paul's code for community and the code for community espoused by the philosophical leaders of his day. In other words, much of what Paul offers is a reflection of basic ethics for individuals and morality for a community that is at work within a wider social construct.
That being said, there is an underpinning theology that is important and separates how the Christian community is to live from other communities. Paul's prevailing theology looks back at God's acts and sees that our God is defined by his one saving act - the Exodus and the Sinai revelation. God is holy and we are to be God's people and God's people will be holy. Moreover, the way of this community is defined at its foundation by God's commandments, which marks the group as special and of a higher household standard than the prevailing notion of such codes in Paul's day. Paul adopts this saving action and the nature of God's people to the emerging Christian community.
In our passage appointed for Christmas day, we see this clearly. God in Christ Jesus has appeared in the incarnation. Christ Jesus, in his own actions, has modelled a higher way of being in the world. We, like the ancient ancestors of Israel, are to be formed by his example. We are to "renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly. God in Christ Jesus is himself redeeming us even in our failure to live this life. We are given Christ, for he gave himself fully. Christ is redeeming us, and we are being purified by his grace.
I would add then that we are to do the same. We are to give ourselves over to the other, we are to give ourselves over to God and to our neighbor. The very basic and essential work is to be "zealous for good deeds."
Paul's list (which comes above and below this passage)is filled with directions for the household code. It is true that some we would agree with and some we would not. Yet they offer us a challenging view of a life lived in the shadow of God's saving embrace. Most of all, we are to live no longer for ourselves but for God and for God's people. We are the gift to this world. As followers of Christ, we are the gift to a world in need, and we are to be about our father's work: good deeds.
A Christmastide bereft of giving to others and, most of all, to the poor, of eating while others go hungry, of warmth and merry cheer while even more are cold, lonely, and remorse is no Christmastide at all.
Some Thoughts on Hebrews 1:1 - 2:12
"In the city of Macon, Georgia, the Harriet Tubman African-American Museum honors the memory of the 'Black Moses,' the best-known conductor on the Underground Railroad..."
Commentary, Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12, Pentecost 18, Bryan J. Whitfield, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.
"...Hebrews holds together a profound image of Jesus as God's very reflection with a very earthy and human figure just like us. That reinforces also our understanding of God and of the spiritual life not as something from or in another world, but as something which fully enters the here and now of flesh and blood."
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary,"Pentecost 18, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia."The concept of incarnation is an affirmation that Jesus really and truly does show us what God is like. When we look at Jesus, we see him embracing the ones nobody else would embrace. We see him confronting the religious people with the falseness of their self-righteousness. We see him forgiving sinners and restoring people to their right mind. And we see him freely and joyfully playing with children!"
In seminary, we were taught that there is no such thing as a God of the Old Testament and a God of the New Testament. Yet, Christians have struggled to always put into context the reality of violence throughout the scripture, including in the New Testament. Somehow we have never really quite figured out how to deal with the various rules, covenants, demands, and variety of things God wants or doesn't want for us. Even Walter Brueggeman, when asked about such things, says something like, "I like to think God is getting over his use of violence."
The author of Hebrews is certainly trying to figure out how to speak of these things and to parse clearly the trajectory of a God who is both alpha and omega while at the same time exhibiting different behaviours and desires.
God communicates to Israel, and God communicates to us. We believe, as theologian Ben Johnson once remarked, a God who raised Jesus out of death and raised Israel out of Egypt.
What is clear for the author of Hebrews and for Christians is that all is to be defined now through the words and actions of God through Christ Jesus. It is his work and words that are to define and radically focus our attention across the great expanse of God's communication with his creatures.
The Incarnation of God in Christ Jesus is a particular vision of God - revealing to us God's intent to be with us and to bridge the chasm between heaven and earth. Sin and death will not be victorious over this divide. Moreover, this person of Jesus is a forerunner of our humanity.
We are in some miraculous and mysterious way to become like Jesus in this world making here heaven on earth - just like we pray in the Lord's Prayer. We are to make here God's neighborhood.
What is an interesting part of this passage is the unique and important reality that the author offers a special place for humanity within the cosmos. Using the words of the psalmist (Psalm 8:4-6), the author reminds us, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor..." I once mentioned that the angels are jealous of humanity for what we have in Jesus and in the holy communion and how special this is for us in the order of things. We are blessed as humans to experience God in and through Jesus in this world and through the inbreaking of God in the incarnation and in the bread and wine. I really got skewered online when I said this. People thought it was heresy. I am of course in good company with the psalmist, the author of Hebrews
and the Polish Roman Catholic St. Maximilian Kolbe, who once said, "If Angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion."
We are to see who God is and how God is moving in the world through Christ Jesus, as is present in scripture and in the communion itself. And what do we see? We see a God who lowers God's self and breaks God's self-open for the sake of those other than God or even godlike. God becomes one with the other and so raises the other up into the community. Here is the Gospel.
Some Thoughts Isaiah 9:2-7
"As far as I know, there is only one good reason for believing that he was who he said he was. One of the crooks he was strung up with put it this way: 'If you are the Christ, save yourself and us' (Luke 23:39). Save us from whatever we need most to be saved from. Save us from each other. Save us from ourselves. Save us from death both beyond the grave and before. If he is, he can. If he isn't, he can't. It may be that the only way in the world to find out is to give him the chance, whatever that involves. It may be just as simple and just as complicated as that."
"Messiah," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.
"Over the next couple of weeks leading from Christmas to Epiphany, the three readings from Isaiah come from all three sections of 'Isaiah' -- First Isaiah, Second Isaiah, and Third Isaiah. All three readings speak out of vastly different contexts.
Commentary, Isaiah 9:2-7, Dirk G. Lange, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
Commentary, Isaiah 9:2-7, Dirk G. Lange, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"This commentary will explore the interpretive history leading to its presence at this powerful moment of the Christian year."
Commentary, Isaiah 9:2-7, Patricia Tull, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
Commentary, Isaiah 9:2-7, Patricia Tull, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text
The beginning of Isaiah is not all sweetness and light, but this passage holds within it a spark of hope that is to be brought to God’s people in Babylon. Here, Isaiah prophesies that in time, that which is dark will be filled with light. That those who struggle and suffer will have the mantle of slavery lifted from their shoulders. The season wherein the powers of this world continue to inflict suffering upon God’s people will come to a close. This will all be brought about by a continuation of the Davidic royal line.
This passage is particularly important to Matthew in his gospel. He does something interesting with it. Matthew weaves this passage with Isaiah 42:7. He changes the “walking” (in the original passage) to “sitting” (from 42). By doing this, Matthew links the two passages. What he is doing is reading that the light is Jesus, that Jesus is the one to continue the Davidic line, that all the nations will know and bear witness to this light, and that God’s people (all people – universally speaking) are to be brought into the light by Jesus.
What originally was read as a prophecy about the Northern Kingdom of Israel and God’s deliverance of his people enslaved to foreign powers now is read through the eyes of the Gospel as identifying the work and mission of Jesus.
In other words, the passage is about revelation - it is about the mission to the Gentiles. The light that comes into the world is the brightness of the Christ who will draw not only the people of Israel to him but the light that will, in fact, draw all people into the embrace of God.
Christ in this way is not simply a Christ for Israel, or even for Christians in our own day...but a Christ that is present in the world as ruler of all, as king of all, as lord of all. His kingdom is marked with love, mercy, kindness, and peace for all who enter and become its citizens.
In other words, the passage is about revelation - it is about the mission to the Gentiles. The light that comes into the world is the brightness of the Christ who will draw not only the people of Israel to him but the light that will, in fact, draw all people into the embrace of God.
Christ in this way is not simply a Christ for Israel, or even for Christians in our own day...but a Christ that is present in the world as ruler of all, as king of all, as lord of all. His kingdom is marked with love, mercy, kindness, and peace for all who enter and become its citizens.
Sermons Preached
Dec 25, 2011
Christmas Sermon, Christ church Cathedral 2011
Dec 25, 2012
Dec 25, 2014
Christmas sermon at Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, 2014
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