sacraconversazione.org

postmodern preaching

Second Sunday after Christmas Day Years A,B,C

  • Jeremiah 31:7-14

Jeremiah, with Ezekiel and Isaiah, dared to speak public words of hope in a desperate time of exile with an announcement: “…says the Lord,” “See I am going to bring… gather them [God’s people in diaspora] from the farthest parts of the earth….”  This bold message of hope is not just for the leaders or the able bodied, but for those who could be left behind under the duress of a long journey home or the excitement of homecoming– the blind, the lame, pregnant women, including those already in labor.  All will begin this journey weeping, but the Lord will lead them back on straight roads with plenty of water sources on the way.  The emotional impact of this daring promise is intensified when the prophet also announces that the Lord says, “I have become a father to Israel….”  The journey home for God’s people which began with tears and a feeljng of abandonment will end when “the young women rejoice in dance and the young men and the old shall be merry.”

  • Psalm 84, (or 84:1-8)

One of the Songs of Zion, this psalm finds the Lord’s presence palpable in one specific place on earth– the Temple on the holy mountain, Mt. Zion.  One day spent even just on the threshold of the Temple, the poet sings, is better than a thousand days anywhere else.

  • Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a

As is customary in any letter from or even attributed to Paul, it opens with a thanksgiving, this time specifically for Christ, who blesses us “with every spiritual blessing…”  and for the faith and love of the community of believers in Ephesus.  Then the writer introduces the theme of the letter, which is a desire for them to acquire “a spirit of wisdom and revelation” as they come to know Jesus.  So that through the vision of revelation they may come to know the hope to which he has called them, which is a “glorious inheritance” and “immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”

[The Revised Common Lectionary provides three options for the gospel this Sunday in which Matthew and Luke use considerable imagination to offer random episodes from that period in Jesus’ life in which the gospels generally show little interest, i.e. before the beginning of his public ministry at his baptism.]

  • Matthew 2:12-15, 19-23

According to Matthew’s narrative, after the magi return home, “an angel of the Lord” instructs Joseph in a dream to take the baby and his mother and “flee to Egypt.”  All this happens “to fulfill what the Lord has spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my Son.’ ”  [Hosea 11:1]  Then another “prophecy” is fulfilled, according to Matthew.  Joseph took them to Nazareth “so that what had been spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.'”  [Isaiah 11:1]  Raymond Brown writes:  “Now we have the full identity of the son of David, son of Abraham, the Son of God, as he will be known for all time: Jesus the NAZOREAN.”  (The Birth of the Messiah,  p. 219)

  • OR Luke 2:41-52

In this episode, unique to Luke’s gospel, Jesus at the age of twelve asserts his independence on his family’s pilgrimage to the Temple at Passover, which is, of course, the same time and same place he will meet his fate as an adult at human hands.  “After three days,” he is found by Mary and Joseph holding his own with “the teachers” who were “amazed.”  His family were “astonished.”  When they also express exasperation at his disappearance, the boy responds, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  They did not understand, although Mary took special note of what he said, Luke writes, and they returned to Nazareth.  “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human form.”

  • OR Matthew 2:1-12

Matthew’s narrative uses some popular folk lore– that the birth stories of great leaders were accompanied by signs in the heavens– for his own purposes.  He also uses the occasional arrival of exotic visitors from “the East” to major cities, such as Rome, and the sensation they caused, to establish that the first to honor the newborn “King of the Jews” were, in fact, Gentiles!  Meanwhile, King Herod “and all of the Jews with him” were “frightened.”  Herod is advised by “the chief priests and scribes” and an ancient prophecy, which Matthew conflates from Micah (5:1) and II Samuel (5:2), so that the status of Bethlehem, which is “no means least among the tribes of Judah” is determined as the birthplace of a new “Shepherd of Israel.”  Herod tells the wise men to find the newborn so that he might also pay homage.  The magi continue to follow the star, find Mary, Joseph and the infant and offer exotic, precious gifts.  They return home via another route to avoid Herod.

Despite the claims of incarnation, Christians still approach the gospels as if they had to “get behind the words to some truth supposedly hidden there which will authenticate their belief…” writes Gabriel Josipovoci.  “They shied away from reading these narratives in the simple and natural way in which they asked to be read.”  (The Book of God, p. 233)

Matthew intertwines two starkly different figures– exotic, foreign seekers and a tyrant who sold out his own people to collude for his own benefit with invading occupiers, the Romans.  The seekers are from a foreign place with strange beliefs and customs.  They innocently contact the local authority, King Herod, soon detect his duplicitous motives, find and pay homage to the child-king and return home to be never heard from again.  In this episode, as well as throughout chapter two, Herod– the lackey of the conquering Romans, re-builder of the Temple and brute despot– is consumed with fear, paranoia and panic.  He tries to deceive the magi, forcing Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt for safety and, in an event so horrific it rarely gets mentioned, yet is important to Matthew’s narrative,  has every male child within his area of authority slaughtered.   Matthew provides for his reader one big surprise: the first to honor the newborn “King of the Jews” are not Jews, but sincere seekers with strange, exotic beliefs.  And he ‘proof-texts’ his case that Jesus is the fulfillment of the most venerable and emotional hopes of God’s people, but also implies that the One who has miraculously appeared in human history is for all who seek him.  He also hints at a recurring theme:  those who are confused by this new appearance of God in action will react with fear and violence.  Already, Matthew has hooked our interests, engaged our emotions and gotten us invested in how the story turns outGod never ceases to surprise; that is one of the ways we can know it is God’s way and not ours!

Luke inserts a story of Jesus as a boy of twelve that hints at how his version will unfold.  On a family pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem at Passover, Jesus disappears for “three days.”  Mary and Joseph are astonished to finally find him engaged with “the teachers.”  The only explanation they are given by Jesus is,” Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  The very first words spoken by Jesus in Luke’s gospel identifies his whole purpose in life with with the Temple, which is for God’s people the deeply loved “home” of God, and which the boy personalizes, further, as “my Father’s house.”  The first time reader of this gospel might recall this scene when Jesus returns to the Temple at the end of his life, in his last week; the returning reader winces at the innocence of the young boy’s devotion to this place, which will become the site of intrigue and violence just before his execution.  We are hooked.

If we take these stories “in that simple and natural way in which they are asked to be read,” as Josipovici implores, then familiar and powerful emotions begin to grip us right from the very beginning.  Already, we flinch at the violent opposition to God’s ways when they challenge human privilege and expectations.  Already, we are captivated by the story of Jesus, which begins in such lovely  innocence, but is so quickly enmeshed in human plotting and violence, especially in the grizzly slaughter of male infants in Matthew’s narrative.  We cringe at the too familiar behavior of politicians and other leaders who exploit public opinion.  But even Luke’s more gentle narrative begins to prepare us for that time in the story when Jesus returns to the Temple on a later Passover as a man for that fateful week when he will be executed.

These stories tells us what we need to know about God and what we should want to know about ourselves.  They do not contain some “hidden truth,” but they convey the plain and simple facts that never loose their power to captivate.  They are the plain facts that run throughout every biblical narrative– human innocence co-mingled with human treachery, panic occasionally calmed with hope, foolish floundering assuaged sometimes with hints of love– border-less love, boundless love, divine love.

For reasons known to God alone, this is how God has chosen to act and to be made known in this world.

Comments are closed.