One can choose Epiphany or the regular Sunday reading.

 

Ps. 72 is one of the text that turned Magi into kings.Christians transfer the king to the messiah. Note how justice and righteousness lead to shalom.vv.12-14 reminds us the the Hebrew ethic to help the weak.

Sheba and Seba seem to be Arabia, maybe into the horn of Africa. Notice they bring gold and gifts and bow down.

If naything is a good prayer for the new Obama adminsitration, much of this fits our need and hope for the new year and new administration.

 

Is. 60 starts off with what became the dreaded, rise and shine expression. Notice the light imagery throughout. Again we have kings, with camels, and Sheba brings gold and incense. (You have to turn to the worship section of Exodus 30 to find all three gifts together. We get camels in v. 6 Adam Smith would like the wealth of nations. Reagan was taken with the image of the united States being a light to other nations.  in v. 6.

 

While I'm at it, magi were counsellors of the rich and powerful. It is possible they were priests in Persian sacrificial liturgy.They amy have medical knowledge.They could be the magicians of daniel and the mag of jeremisahThey used astrology and maybe sorcery. Their influence eventually reached Rome and may have been involved in the Mithra cult. (Its use of a baptism and eucharist were condemned by Chrisitans ) We may encounter them in Acts in Simnon and Elymas

 

Jer. 31:1-14 is a covenant reading. It changes the wilderness of history to a new wilderness of the present. Love, steadfast love is empahsized. As last week we get a marriag emetaphor to show the depthof God's love for us. For New Year's building an planting metaphors are good. Celebration images fit well here too.We may have echoes of psalms here. Again, God saves the weak.Notice that this is anot only spiritual salvation. Even grief is overturned here. Thsi verges on a new creation, perhaps a messianic banquet, a feast for marriage and for deliverance.

Simeon
Sermon Dec. 28, 2008 Lk. 2:21-40, Isaiah 62:1-5

We say that the Christmas season is for children, as it surely is. Youth and age frame Luke’s story surrounding the Nativity. Old Zechariah and Elizabeth are with the youthful Mary and Joseph. Now two people, both of whom I picture as old, Anna and Simeon, frame an infant it must have been a thrill for these two country people of Galilee to be able to present their firstborn in the temple in the throbbing city of Jerusalem. Anna and Simeon hear the throbbing cry of a circumcised baby.

Christmastime is a movement into the world imagined by Isaiah. Part of the letdown after Christmas is that things looked so pretty, a winter wonderland all around. We pack away the decorations as we look to next year, but at this point it feels like taking down beauty by the calendar date. So it feels as if Beulah land, marriage celebration land, is being replaced by a more desolate look, in part, by our own hand, forgotten until next year. Of course, the reverse is true as well. The whole point of Isaiah’s image is to show that marriage is closest metaphor we can use to get at the complete loyalty God has to the people. A marriage creates a family; It is our culture’s way of announcing that the welfare of the other is as much part of our life as our own, maybe even more so.

Of course, the Incarnation is another way of coming at the same point. God wants the partnership to be so unbreakable with us that God’s own self would join with us in the person of Jesus. All the way back to Abraham, God had the sign of circumcision to show the pledge of fealty. Now God’s own would undergo that same pledge in the temple of Jerusalem. Simeon and Anna lived on the dark side of Isaiah’s vision, but here, at life’s end, they enjoy the wedding feast of God and humanity in the beloved temple. The old ritual of circumcision breathes in the fresh, 8 day old life of Jesus. For Christians, we can look at our baptism as a marriage vow.

Not only do they see a long-held dream fulfilled, they burst into a vision of the future as well. Some see the future as all in the hands of God, but most of us see a mixed picture where we form the future along with the hand of God. What we dodoes matter for the shape of the future. In that sense they appear to us as Father and Mother Time, as they know the past, see Jesus in their own lives, and peer into the future. They are not ghosts as in A Christmas Carol. These real people see is a mixed future, as it always will be until god’s vision finally falls into place. They are symbols of the fading of the old order, and the birth of the new. Here, the old transforms the old, reshapes it. Our liturgical season doesn’t line up with the cultural calendar. For it, Christmas is over, but for us it is going strong until Epiphany, the Magi fo January 6^th, 12 days of Christmas.

2009 beckons. We look with mixed regret and happiness at the year almost complete. We especially hope for better times to start to appear. I always push the idea that the spiritual always includes the whole of our lives. At the same time, we cannot neglect the spiritual side of our lives. Perhaps we can learn to ask what God would like us to make of the situations where we find ourselves. Like Anna and Simeon it is good to ask what we would like to live to see. It is good to look back and gape at what we have already seen. Fro instance, I never thought I would live to see Eastern Europe be free of the Russian boot without a shot being fired. Just because we grow older we don’t have to lose our dreams. The New Year is the province of us all, the young and old together.

Christmas Eve 08 Luke 2:1-20, John 1:1-14

Luke starts the Christmas story in a political frame. T would be like saying that this Christmas is the last year of the Bush presidency, the year of the re-election of Gov. Daniels. Quirinius the Roman bureaucrat had a busy day. He wrote a report to Augustus on the census, Christmas Day-He gave the usual data about crops, expected taxes coming, population estimates, political gossip and rumor. He called Augustus all the right titles: son of the divine, prince of peace, savior. No notice at all was given to a birth in Bethlehem.

It was just an ordinary day in Israel, just an ordinary day in Bethlehem. Within the ordinary, under the surface, God was working a miracle. Almost acting undercover, God was at work, with no one noticing. Maybe that’s why some want snow at Christmas, as it covers with a fresh blanket. Christmas alters our perspective. Even angry people are happy that they get to complain about long lines and seeing family.

Christmas is just another day to mark on the calendar. Babies are born every day. Silent Night is just another song. Maybe angels do sing with every birth. We sing, “let every heart, prepare him room.” Tell me that God doesn’t light up a bit when people push money into a Cheer fund can. Kathy Bennett told me a true story of a small child just starting to get the idea of giving to charity. She understood the Cheer Fund but was upset that she thought the man ringing the bell needed help. She asked who was with the man and was told his father. “You mean he’s in trouble and needs help too?” She later offered to trade in her fruit roll up if her mother would give her the cash so she could help them by putting money into their buckets.

Of course, it is not every day that the logos, what we translate as word, God’s own logic, enters a human life. Luther famously said that God became small at Christmas. Yes, small enough to fit into every crevice of human life. God’s love is big enough to become small if that’s what we require to grasp God’s intentions for us. I think that the Incarnation means that God was not only deeply involved in that solitary life of Jesus, but became more embedded into the flow of every human life. Christmas is sentimental, but it gives us spiritual cavities if if it allowed to be only sweetness. Christmas shows that God is concerned with more than only the spiritual side. The Incarnation is about Jesus living out his name, God saves; God delivers; God helps in our needs here and now, while it does point to heaven beyond. That may be a reason for why Jesus was born in less than ideal circumstances. In those times when we are not at our best, God is in the middle of it, helping us to bring Christmas reconciliation, Christmas peace.

It is not every night that we can sing Silent Night and mean it. This is the night we light the Christ Candle. It is not every night that a choir of angels sings. Maybe they sang loud enough for everyone to hear, but everyone else was asleep. This may well be the one time of year that we open our ears to the voices of Christmas. This may be the one time of year that our eyes are opened to the beauties that lie beneath the everyday. We dust off our memories, maybe even dust off our hearts, too long tucked away for safe keeping, We take off the defensive wrappings and open our arms wide that presents scattered around on Christmas morning. When you open your packages try o see each other presents to decorate your life.

Is. 61:11-62:3

 

v.11 and 62:1, 2 vindication is OK, but usually this is righteousness/right relations. It should usually be paired with social arangments as well as personal piety/spirituality.

 

diadem= comes from a word for band, so I assume it is a golden crown/band, perhaps with jewels. So a royal splendor is lifted up after the destruction of Jerusalem and exile. think cinderella: from ashes to a crown.

 

The KJV took some of the words as titles. Most famously, it took beulah, the word for married and used it as a title, just like Israel. Forsaken=Azuba- Desolate=shemamah- my delight is in her=Hephzibah.
 

This seems to be a marriage scene for God and Dame Zion. One could extend this into the Incarnation for christmas. God's desire for covenant goes beyond marriage. So, God's very self/ Logos enters into the condiditon of the creature. As Luther said, at christmas god became small.

 

  

When do you feel as if you live in forsaken or desolate land? How does christmas pressure help push one into it? How does christmas help us out of those fearsome places? How do the days afte christmas feel like a letdown?

Sermon 12/21/08 Lk. 1:26-55

 

Mary was an ordinary woman. Taken aback, but only for a while, by Gabriel’s announcement, Mary found her voice. While women had private voice, they could not often speak publicly. She found a voice that spoke for social life. She goes beyond the charity of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. She sees the selection of her as a sign of big things to come, a new game in town, when the old ways would not cut it any more. The ways things are cannot be the way things should be, could be, or would be.

Jesus would be with us in ordinary life God did not put the divine hopes on angels, or power, but in the hands of a young, possibly quite young, woman. How can this be? After all of this time, God would pick an ordinary family to raise the one to be called Jesus. She knows of the promises of God all the way back to Abraham and David. Messianic reading of promise to David She starts to see that she will be the vehicle for promises that were thousands of years old coming into being in a way as new as the child within her womb. That dream was half forgotten, said as much as out of the realm of possibility, but now it was alive in her.

It was appropriate for Gabriel to deliver the message. First, we have a little joke. The name means a mighty one for God, as in the army of the heavenly host, but here the general is a mere delivery service for the prince of peace. Second, Gabriel was associated with ripening fruit, and he announces that the fruit of Mary will be Jesus of Nazareth. (By the way, I have to throw this in. The followers of George Rapp in New Harmony believed that Gabriel spoke with him, and one can see the footprint of the angel there.) Finally, Gabriel was a figure of the end times. Gabriel announces the beginning of the end of the old order and the start of the new way of God with the announcement of the impending birth of Jesus.

The announcement was only the beginning, of course. Mary waited nine full months to have her baby. I wonder if nine months seemed long enough to start to grasp what the future could hold for her and Joseph. Luke has her doing a lot o travel in her expectant months, to Elizabeth and then a hard journey to Bethlehem. Even now, many of us wait a while to even announce a pregnancy, as we hope everything will be all right. With ultrasound we get to hear the fast beat of the heart, a holy moment as we hear the sound of a new life. Advent is only four weeks. It is time for us to learn to listen for the heartbeat of Jesus in the ordinary. Can we spot a Gabriel making a birth announcement of a new turn in life? Every day, we give birth to the new future, or maybe the hand of God helps bring us to new birth in the future.

Christmas is almost here. In these few remaining days, I pray that all of us set aside some time.to seek the spirit of the new life of Christmas. It may be in listening to old songs, or findings some new Christmas stories, to watch a Christmas movie, to read once again, the biblical story of the Nativity. Mary would never have another firstborn. We will never have another Christmas 2008. It would be a shame to enter into another Christmas dispirited, never giving the story of the Incarnation some time to take hold and grow within us. As the hymn says (O Little Child), “where meek souls will receive Him still/ the dear Christ enters in/ be born in us today/we hear the Christmas angels/the great glad tidings tell/o come to us, abide with us/ O Lord Emmanuel.

Sunday December
21-V-The virgin birth used to be a standard question for ministerial
candidates. What sort of human vessel would be proper for the birth
of the Messiah? It points to biology not being destiny. It points to
the truth that facts are not the whole story. As the angle says to
Mary, with God nothing is impossible. God can use the ordinary in
extraordinary ways. God works through us to express miracles.

Monday-W-wassail is a
spiced, hot wine, often served in a big bowl for a party. It is an
Anglo-Saxon word that isn’t the drink but a toast to one
health, to be hale and hearty, to be whole. What is your favorite
toast? When did a toast touch you or make you laugh? In its way, the
birth of Jesus was a divine toast to humanity to become what it could
be. What would happen if we viewed worship as making toasts to God?

Tuesday-X Xenophilia is
Greek for the word usually translated as hospitality. The Holy Family
met a form of xenophobia, fear of strangers, for there was no room
for hem to stay to give birth the Good Samaritan story is a good
example of offering hospitality. We live in fear not only of
strangers, but strange ideas and strange customs. What fears of the
different inhibit you? What offers of hospitality have improved your
life? How are you inhospitable to the presence of Christ? Where do
you welcome the presence of Christ?

Christmas
Eve--Y-Yuletide is another one of those older Christmas words. It
apparently was a pre-Christian winter festival that last 12 days, the
precursor of the 12 days of Christmas, perhaps. Tide meant a time or
season in Old English. Do you have special Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day traditions? Do you like snow for the Christmas season?

Christmas Day-Z-I was
going to go for the obvious, zeal, but chose zest instead. Since it’s
a brand of soap, it isn’t used much. If nay day gives a zest
for the spark of life, this is it. Opening presents under the tree
adds zest to the day. What is an obstacle to a zestful life? What
contributes to it? What are your favorite parts of Christmas Day?
Consider reading the stories in Mt. 1 and Lk. 2 again, or maybe some
of the passages in Isaiah such as 1: 3, chs. 9, 11, 35, 60 that help
express messianic hope. You can keep Christ in your Christmas.

Friday-The day after
Christmas can be a bit of a downer. The house looks empty without all
of the presents under the tree. On the other hand, it’s Friday,
so we can make one long Christmas party. It may well be part of a
long weekend for you this year, a Sabbath time. Are there things you
like doing the day after Christmas? If you’ve been around
infants, sit for a bit and consider Jesus as a newborn. Stay with
that awhile and consider the vulnerability of God’s hope in
that one infant.

Saturday-Some folks
start taking down the Christmas decorations, and others leave them
until New Year’s or January 6^th for the Magi. Some
folks try to keep the decorations up for as long as possible. How can
you decorate your life, so as to keep some of Christmas, even while
the decorations are being boxed up? What in your life needs to be
boxed up and put away, maybe even discarded?

Third Week Advent Devotional

December 14-O-Opulence is a goal for many presents. We can be opulent with the hand work of a craft of course. I just heard a story of mannerly opulence. A woman and her daughter kept bumping into the same man as they made their way around the market. Finally, the mother said, “don’t I know you?” The man lowered his eyes, I’m the man who comes around. He meant around back to pick up the trash. The mother said, of course, you’re one of the most important men in my life. The man just beamed.

Monday –P-A season of peace is hard to face with American troops overseas. Snow only covers up blood. The cold matches the human heart that sees an enemy instead of a brother or sister. A Christmas card wishing peace can indeed be a prayer when a family is worried about loved ones. Yes, we all crave inner peace. We also crave not only a respite from fighting, but a season, a long season, of peace.

Tuesday-Q-Quiet is my image of the season, even in the midst of all of the noise. Consider using some of the abundant Christmas decoration as a focal point for prayer: a candle, tinsel, the tree, whatever strikes you. Using that image can help still all of the warring, unquiet voices within. When the voices distract you, let them, but slowly return to your selected image.

Wednesday-R-Rest seems to be in short supply in this season. Advent in religious terms fades into a swirl of Christmas parties, gatherings, and a mad dash to fill the shopping lists. How to find a center of rest in the bustle? Is it possible to imagine oneself resting in God like the baby resting in the manger? In a hectic time, I’m a fan of trying to take little breaks, to step back from the stress and breathe a bit.

Thursday-S-Savior-The Greek word, soter, Savior, has its root in saos, to be safe. That is likely a bit different than being saved from something; it has a sense of being secure, safe and sound. Even Bethlehem could only be safe for a while, and the One who would has us be safe had to be an exile in Egypt. In the many ironies of the bible the future Savior had to be saved from the same forces that would eventually take his life, but that seeming success of evil is transformed into the stage for the new resurrection life.

Friday-T-Tekton is Greek for a craftsman, including carpenters. I’ve always liked that Jesus was raised by a craftsman. Of course, Jesus would grow up to craft souls. Joseph’s life was probably spent making simple things that his clients rarely had the money to pay for, so it was a life on the edge. For all the talk lately of a gospel of wealth, Jesus did not live within it.

Saturday-U-I’m of the age where we grew up fascinated by the undercover agent. I don’t know how much I’d like to play with the idea that Jesus was sort of an undercover divine agent to explore humanity. What lessons did he draw from his 30 years on the planet? Christmas has an undercover aspect of needing to look behind the surface. What does the wrapped present contain? What do we all harbor within us?

Is. 61 I Thes. 5:16-21 Dec. 14 Sermon

Jesus loved Is. 61. These words form most of the mission statement of Jesus in Luke 4. You can tell he’s his mother’s son, as they bear some linkage to her great prayer coming to terms with Gabriel’s announcement. It’s a promise of moving from Christmas blues to Christmas joy. It is directed toward the people who need Christmas. Jubilee-the tidings of comfort and joy are directed to those in trouble. As usual, it is part of the already in motion, but far from complete tension in the faith. In other words, if you are doing well, reach out. If not, learn to receive help, but still reach out to those in trouble. God’s plan here is to lift up those who are down, to bring them up to a new and better level.

I don’t think that this is directed at the economically vulnerable alone. Hard times affect not only the pocketbook, but the spirit as well. Isaiah calls for us to bind up physical wounds but reach out to help heal emotional or psychological wounds as well. At Crown Pointe, the women did a good job in offering suggestions on how they coped with their first Christmas as widows to a lady who lost her husband over a month ago. How do we receive oil of gladness to help with the pall of mourning? The holidays can be a time of refreshed grief. It is often best to admit that. Some people do well to find a focal point, such as buying a special ornament for the tree or trying to offer a public service as when the Frensenmeyer family remembered bob with a Christmas dinner to the community. It can be sharing some memories; maybe memories that others haven’t heard, or enjoy rehearing.

It’s easier to be in the Christmas spirit to those in our Christmas cards than those we have to deal with at a Christmas gathering. Today, our reading from Paul is quite similar to last week’s advice from Peter. Paul realizes that life in community is not easy. Still, we are warned not to be Scrooges in this season, or any season. We continue the spirit of Christmas, the spirit of the Incarnation of God’s hopes for the world in some of these steps. Paul gives these steps for the first time in written form, in this the possibly oldest New Testament document, older than the gospels by a good twenty years. In its way, Paul tells us to treat people as if expecting or hoping for an extra good present from them. It is difficult to see each other as presents from God. Our packaging is not always the best and the social graces we learn often hide serious flaws, far worse than those dread words: some assembly required or batteries not included. We see family again and calculate their flaws and annoying habits, but rarely look for the best in them. Part of that spirit is praying for others. I mean praying in their spiritual development, emotional growth, as well as in the times of illness. We can thank God for the people in our lives, not only pray about their needs as if they are only a collection of problems. Instead, Paul tells us to look for the best in people. We are at our best when we try to bring out the best in others.

Paul tells us to watch out for the exhausted. One way we can do that is to help limit people’s push toward exhaustion. Women, especially, put too much on their to do list at this time of year, not the honey do list, but the huge list of expectations they maintain and even create at this time of year. I don’t know if we should commemorate Mary’s labor pains by laboring so hard to try to make a perfect Christmas. Then our nerves get on edge and we are as cranky as Scrooge. Exhausted is not way to go into a holiday. Exhausted in so way to prepare for the feast of the incarnation of God’s own being into our lives at Christmas. Advent is time to get ready for the big day filled with God’s good energy.

1) this plays with the meaning of house: is it the temple or the royal dynasty.

2) this is different than the sinai covenant as it seems unconditional to the house of david

3)This seems to be an ideology for royal legitmacy by fusing temple and royal power into a unit. The opposite of separation of church and state.

4) Notice that Nathan does not give consistent advice as he is willing to listen to a new voice from god

5) Look at god's preference for Solomon to tdo the work but also what seems to be pleasure in the freedom of the tent of meeting v. the portal of heaven and earth at the temple. One could use this as a good entry point on the presence of god at Advent/Christmas. Where is God, in church, or with the poor, with the pious or the squirming kid, in the perfect bell choir or with the disastrous christmas pageant.

6) This is a good Advent text as it links, past, present, future.

7) I like how god, with a moreover, reverses david request and decides to be the giver, not receiver of gifts.Again, the issue of giving or receiving gifts is a good piece for spiriutal growth or a sermon.

8) look at how christian messianic views have changed the political meaning fo a dynasty to a different level utterly, but see how lk stays in tension with it at 1:31-3.

9) Good example of father-son not biological. See Ps. 2:7 and 89:26

10) Onme could talk about faithful and faithfless promises, God's steadfast love/lyalty/liovingkindness (hesed). broken and kept vows/ making promises and unmaking them/ remembering or forgetting them.Christmas cards are a weak attempt to stay in touch after we've promised to do so. One could get nice and senitimental on Christmas promises.

December 8^th
is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Roman Catholic
community. It is a doctrine that deals with the question, if Jesus
was sinless at birth, would the vessel of his birth need to be
special as well? While Protestants don’t hold to the doctrine,
all Christians come to think of Mary at this time of year when we see
her glowing face in so many manger scenes.

A fine book by the late
Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries, sparks much of this
piece (Of course it’s in our library). Since Mary is obviously
important, but since we do not have a great abundance of biblical
material about her, she has served as a projection point for the
religious needs of people over time. For instance, the god that was
presented to me in my youth was a forbidding figure, and Mary’s
image of kind protection helped feed the part of my soul that need
nurturing.

My mother was baptized
in a church that celebrated Our Lady of Czestochowa, the famed Black
Madonna. It was an ancient icon enshrined in Poland since the 1300s.
Its face was darkened by smoke, and it is known as the black Madonna.
It was even thought to win a battle in one of the many wars of its
bloody history. No matter how much defeat, it was a symbol of Poland.
When Lech Walesa fought tyranny with the Solidarity movement of the
1980s, he carried an image of the Black Madonna, with the scars on
her cheek.

The great early church
theologian Irenaeus saw Mary as a second Eve. Eve’s name may
mean life. Ironically the sin of the first couple brought the death
of relationship with God. Through Mary’s obedience, our lives
were resuscitated. Through her son, “mortality was absorbed
into immortality.” We rightly look at all of the damage done by
the church to women over the years. On the other hand, the church
lifted Mary up as the very emblem of humanity at its best, for Mary
embodied the woman of great worth from Proverbs 31. After all it
links a noble woman to the very wisdom of God, a wisdom given
feminine attributes in the first nine chapters of Proverbs. She was
considered the very model of the 4 cardinal virtues of temperance,
prudence, justice, and fortitude.

In a time of spiritual
searching, the Mystic’s Mary appears Hopkins would write that
with Mary “new Nazareths appear…new self and nobler
me.”. Mary provides a key to union with Christ, so in a
spiritual sense Christ lives in us. When injustice grinds down the
poor, Mary appears as the speaker of the Magnificat in Luke, the
defender of the poor who wants a reversal of the power that be. Think
of the Guadalupe vision where Mary speaks to the Indiana n the native
language, not the language of the Spanish, Christian, oppressors. –In
age after painful age, three is Mary who stood at the cross, a woman
of sorrows who saw her first-born son die terribly. The Pieta stands
for all who see a child die before them, for those countless
forgotten victims of so many wars fought that end up depriving
families of their loved ones when they are dismissed as collateral
damage. . When gaps appear in our conception of God, the mother of
God’s own arises to fill the gap.

Pay some attention to
the depiction of Mary in all of the manger scenes, in all the
Christmas paintings on Christmas cards. You’ll see a face of
serenity that will anchor you through all the hectic madness of this
season that starts, after all, with her delivery.

December 7- H-The hymn,
Hark, the Herald Sing has 2 words we rarely use, hark and herald, I
thought hark was an exclamation, but it is a verb: to listen
attentively. A herald gave important announcements and is often a
state envoy. In other words, the hymn is: Listen, the angels have a
broadcast. A salutary spiritual exercise is to take older terms that
we use in church and translate them into more contemporary language.

Monday I-Incarnation
means “God was in Christ, that deity was able to inhabit a
human being. We rush into the life of Jesus and the meaning of his
death. Stay for a moment that the Logos, God’s plan, God’s
logic, God’s idea for the world rested in a baby. How do we
come to grips with the Creator becoming united with the creature so
fully? Remember, this is not God playing the part of a human being.
Jesus is a human being.

Tuesday-J-Joy is an
elusive feeling for many of us. In a season where joy seems to be a
requirement, we may react against it, closing off, instead of seeking
it or embracing it when found. The joy of the season is partly the
joy of relief; the promise really did come true, the joy of a wish
come true. What are times of joy for you?

Wednesday-K-Lately I’ve
been working with the idea in Phil. 2 that Christ emptied himself/was
made into nothing. In Greek the word is kenosis. (See, there’s
the K). Imagine the Creator being united with the developing body of
a baby. Does that square with the mighty God? What withdrawals had to
happen to permit that little brain to develop? What had to remain for
God’s spirit to dwell in that child? How can the finite embrace
the infinite?

Thursday-Light pervades
this holiday season as a protest against the dying of the daylight
during the solstice. It is a protest against the darkness trying to
overcome the light in our lives, deep inside. Lighten our darkness is
a plea to see, but could it be a sense that darkness weighs us down,
and the load needs to be lighter? This season, please try not to pile
burdens on yourself so that Santa’s sleigh could not handle the
weight. Lighten the load.

Friday-M-Magi visited a
child in a manger. (See, 2Ms) In the legendary birthplace of Jesus in
Bethlehem, one must bow before entering the chamber with the star.
The Magi, advisors to the powerful, bowed before a most unlikely
prince, a baby laid in a feeding trough. Their name is related to our
word for magic. These magicians fo wisdom and advice brought gifts
not to a great magician how would possess not magic but the power of
divine love. Better put, they were exposed to the deeper magic of
God’s reality over illusion.

Saturday-N-Noel is a
Christmas word. It holds some of the history of English. With the
Norman conquest of England, French came into our language. It’s
a French word from Latin, for nativity, to be born. It can also mean
any Christmas carol. (We’re not sure where carol derives,
perhaps all the way back to the Greek chorus to play the flute, to
dance to songs. The story of Christmas is able to blend languages and
cultures into its orbit. As a word with a long history, ti helps us
to realize that the past is not merely disposable, but it continues
to help shape our present.

Is. 40:1-11, Ps. 85

After words of warning, we hear a decidedly different voice: one of comfort. Instead of shouts of warning, we hear of tenderness. Instead f the word of impending doom hanging overhead, we hear enough is enough. The dreadful waiting was over; the feared punishment had indeed come, and their country was in ruins. A page in national life had turned.

Instead of wilderness wandering, the people will be treated to a divine super-highway, with the obstacles flattened. One day our journey won’t be so hard, but it will be an easy trip. The bathrooms in the rest stops will all be clean. The vending machines will be cheap and will all work. Perhaps the second coming will come with the words of Ps. 85, a time when righteousness and peace will kiss each other. One day all of the obstacles we have built against peace will fall, and the problem will be in creating conflicts. Let alone war. One day we won’t need laws to keep us inline.

After this wonderful announcement, heaven wants the news to spread, and we move to a dialogue in and with heaven. The prophet’s words in response to the request to announce the comforting news that the punishments are at an end are utterly depressed. After all, the prophet has seen destruction. Why bother, life is so fragile, so transient, so ephemeral. God’s breath/spirit does cause flourishing but withering. What’s the use? What’s the point.?

Please note that it seems that the prophet is in the midst of a vision in the midst of heaven, and his first word is arguing with the assembled host. I think that prophet’s sudden shift from depression to hope is the result of the prophet’s cathartic words of depression allowing him to see a note of hope What does it mean to you to have stability and confidence in the security fo the word of God? Here’s something to hold on to, the faithful promise of God. To be able to pray like this is a sign of abundant trust in God’s patience. We’re family, and families need to talk things out sometimes.

At passage end, we have 2 images of God: one of might and one of compassion. The emphasis seems to me to be on the gentleness after the terrifying destruction of Jerusalem and the pain of exile. For Christians, the last image redefines the image of God in compassion rather than the iron fist of might. As the faith developed, that second image of God started to blossom. . God’s power is more often demonstrated by the power of tender care and to take on more and more weight, as we can see with Jesus. In the end, the destruction of Jerusalem did not teach a long-lasting lesson for moral change. Somehow suffering must be infused with meaning, noble meaning, or else it serves to depress and corrode the moral sense, not uplift or transform it. Human wrong is so deep-seated that God would work from the inside out. Many of our brothers and sisters practice Advent waiting with undisguised glee at the assumed coming destruction. That leaves out Incarnation and Resurrection. My sense is that God will use examples such as the highway of the Lord to transform and build, not annihilate. Jesus Christ did not lead a life of destruction but of teaching a different path and healing to allow people to discover that path. It’s no accident that Jesus would take on the title of the Good Shepherd. This is a time of year when our hearts go out to people in trouble, and we try to give them a helping hand out fo the troubles. All of us become part of one flock, one family.

I'm not going to judge if this is indeed a different section following 40-55. It clearly is in deep conversation with those preceding chapters. This forms most of the "mission statement" of Jesus in Lk. 4

The Spirit is allied with the servant, (see 42:1-4). Anointing has messianic meaning for many, as the word itself attests.. Priest, prophets, kings were anointed

Look, at this season, to whom the work is directed. It is not destructivbe work but healing and liberating work. Oppressed=anawim that could also be afflicted or quite simply the poor. Release can't help but bring up thoughts of Jubillee (see the Mary Chapin Carpenter song) from Lev. 25.

The year of the Lord's favor could be directed to this or to 49:8 that the time of favor/grace has come. In v. 4, it seems to lead to rebuilding, but notice the sense of age, many generations.

 

This is a hard time of year for the grieiving-look at what is offered them now.

 

I like this phrase-oaks of righteousness-especially when we recall that it is a relational word more than following strictures.  

 

The lectionary then skips, for some reasons, but one can always restore the verses, to v. 8. We a textual issues it could be wrongdoing or it could be robbery with an offering, that would be a nice entry into worship v. social justice.

Shame is a sense of public exposure, so it is being transformed by public acclaim.

v.10 If one wants to talk about holiday spirit, the sense of one's whole being exulting in v. 10 is a good place to start.

 

We are all wearing our baptismal robes of the new self. here the servant/p[rophet is clotherd in salvation and righteousness. These are not burdens but festive garments.

 

Please note the agricultural metaphor in v. 11. In v. 3 we have plantings. This is a victory garden, see Brown's Ethos of the Cosmos