Sentence: To you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord (Luke 2:11).
Collect: Bosco Peter's Book of Prayers in Common March 2025
Readings: [I am just giving one set from the NZ Lectionary]
Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14
Comments:
Isaiah 9:2-7
In this prophecy, as originally given, the hope and expectation concerns restoration of the greatness and supremacy of the Davidic throne.
At the point of writing, Israel's situation is oppressive: note the implicit violence of the language of "yoke," "bar," "rod," and "boots" in verses 4-5.
Verse 4's reference to "Midian" is a recollection of story of Gideon's defeat of Midian (Judges 7:15-25).
Verses 6 onwards celebrate the birth of a new David (perhaps, at the time of writing, the birth of Hezekiah). Christian readers of these verses have read these verses as perfectly correlated with the birth of Jesus and his subsequent growth to be the adult preacher and leader of the Kingdom of God.
Psalm 96
This psalm is coherent with the hope and expectation of the restoration of Israel, foreshadowed in the Isaiah reading above.
Titus 2:11-14
11: In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the grace of God has appeared (been manifested) to the world. "Bringing salvation to all" is enigmatic: does it imply that all will be saved? At the very least it is stating that the salvation the Saviour brings is available to all humanity.
12: The coming of the Saviour (the birth and life of Jesus Christ) and the expectation of his return to earth (v. 13) creates a "present age" in which we (followers of Jesus Christ) need to know how to live. Paul thus speak of the same "grace of God" which has saved us also working within us to train us to "renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly."
13: This training scheme (so to speak) endures "while we wait for the blessed hope and manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ." Christ is unseen in our midst during this time but we will know when he comes in glory because it will be manifest among us. Note the rare occasion here when Jesus Christ is identified within the New Testament as God.
14: Who is Jesus Christ? Three notable characteristics are mentioned in this verse.
First, "who gave himself for us" (see also Galatians 1:4; 2:20; Ephesians 5:2; 1 Timothy 2:6). Christ came for our sakes and in his coming gave himself over to death that we might live.
Secondly, "redeem us" or, in the context of Paul's day, buy us out of slavery (to Satan, to sin): see also Romans 3:24; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 6:20; 7:23; Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:14; Mark 10:45). Christ gave himself in costly sacrifice that we might be redeemed.
Thirdly, "purify for himself a people of his own": see also Deuteronomy 7:6-8; exodus 9:5-16; 1 Peter 2:9. Christ came to restore and enlarge the people of God, according to the promises made long ago to Israel (see above, Isaiah and Psalm readings).
Luke 2:1-14
There is a wonderful but quite technical debate within the first few verses of this passage concerning the reference to Quirinius and thus to the time of this registration (census). In short, the debate concerns whether we can match what we know of Quirinius as a Roman official and the time when we think Jesus was born (according to Matthew's chronology which places Jesus' birth before the death of Herod the Great). See here for a discussion of the issues.
What is indisputable is what Luke is attempting in these first few verses.
First, he is locating the birth of King Jesus in the world ruled by another king, the Roman emperor Augustus (1). The whole story of Luke-Acts tells us how the king born in Bethlehem, via the preaching of his apostles, became a rival king to the Emperor in Rome itself. Later in the passage, the angelic announcement of "good news" to the shepherds is an (Israel, Jewish, Old Testament-ish) equivalent of an imperial Roman announcement of "good news" re a new, supreme emperor.
Secondly, he is explaining how Jesus of Nazareth (i.e. Jesus who grew up in Nazareth) nevertheless was born in Bethlehem, some distance away (2-4).
Thirdly, he is connecting the birth of Jesus as king with the house of David, the greatest King of Israel (4, 11).
Of course for there to be a baby there needs to be a birth, and with the preliminaries of time and place out of the way, we finally read that Jesus is born (6-7).
Note how the specific location of his first days/weeks of life "in a manger" is a tiny detail within these verses. Do we make too much of this when we talk much of Jesus being born in a stable, seemly unwanted in the inn? (As an aside, the use of the term "inn" is much debated. Luke's uses a different word to the Story of the Good Samaritan, where the Samaritan takes the injured traveler for his recovery. We might more accurately use a word such as "lodging" and leave open the question whether it was an inn or a (crowded) house of a relative.)
Nevertheless, in a passage mentioning Augustus and David, the reference to Jesus being placed after birth in a feeding trough underlines the obscurity of Jesus' beginning to his life: he is born in Palestine (at the edge of the Roman Empire), in Bethlehem (an insignificant village relative to the great city of Jerusalem) and placed in a manger (outside of ordinary human residency).
Why do we then meet shepherds (8-14) as the first, in Luke's telling, to greet the newborn king?
Obviously we must speculate as Luke gives no hints. But shepherds in the context of associating Jesus with King David (the shepherd-king) suggests that shepherds are very appropriate as a group to recognise the new Shepherd-King Jesus.
They are good shepherds, incidentally, because in the middle of the night they are "keeping watch over their flock" (8) Understandably they are afraid when unexpectedly an angel appears, the glory of the Lord shines around them and they hear a voice (9-10). Everything here, including the fear, is redolent of many instances in the Old Testament when the angel of the Lord appears to a person or a couple or a group. As then so now the first words of the angel are "Do not be afraid" (10). The angel has not come to judge the shepherds but to announce good news to them and to ask them to be part of the celebration of that announcement, which is "good news of great joy for all the people" (10-11).
Verse 11 piles on the titles for Jesus! He is "A Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord." With these three titles the angel is saying that the newborn baby is the full fulfilment of all Old Testament prophecies about the one who would come to restore Israel (see, again, our passage from Isaiah above, as one such prophecy). And "Lord" is particularly significant as it equates Jesus with God himself (since the exclusive name of the God of Israel, YHWH, is translated by the same Greek word, kyrios, in the Greek Old Testament).
Verse 12 adds a little to the meaning of the manger. How will the shepherds know where to find this baby? (Remember, no GPS, no cellphones in those days!) Presumably more than one baby was born at that time. But only one had been placed in a manger. The others would have been in their cots and cribs in their homes. A few questions in the nosy, gossipy community of Bethlehem and the shepherds would have easily found the baby-in-a-manger.
With a final burst of song, verses 13-14, the angels were gone and the shepherds were on their way to Bethlehem (15). But what a burst of song it was. What would we give in the world today for the simple matter of "peace"?
CHRISTMAS 1
[It is also Holy Innocents but the readings are not commented on here, though note the gospel readings are similar: Jeremiah 31:15-20; Psalm 8; 1 Corinthians 1:25-29; Matthew 2:13-18.]
Theme(s): Vulnerability of Christ / Holy Innocents [strictly, Saturday 28 December 2019] / God's new way in the face of evil /Jesus became like us to save us
Sentence:
I will cause a righteous branch to spring forth for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. Then Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely. (Jeremiah 33:15, 16).
Collect: Bosco Peter's Book of Prayers in Common March 2025
O God,
you wonderfully created
and yet more wonderfully restored
the dignity of human nature;
grant that we may share the divine life
of your Son Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God now and for ever. Amen.
Readings:
Isaiah 63:7-9
Psalm 148
Hebrews 2:10-18
Matthew 2:13-23
Commentary:
Isaiah 63:7-9
Here the prophet recalls the deliverance of Israel from Egypt by the hand of God, through God's own presence saving Israel (v. 9). In our gospel reading, Jesus, like Israel the son of God, is forced to go down to Egypt and brought back to Israel by God. So this passage is apt. It connects with Jesus being brought out of Egypt, like Israel of old. It also generally conveys a message of God as immediate deliverer and saviour of Israel by his presence, as God will save Israel by his presence in Jesus Christ the Emmanuel, God with us.
Psalm 148
This is - obviously - a song of praise. In organ terms, it pulls out all the stops as it invokes praise of God from every corner of the world and through every aspect of nature.
Why should each and every part of creation be cajoled into joining this great chorus of praise? Well, they exist by command of the Lord! 'Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.' (v.5)
Why this psalm on this day? It is the season of Christmas so a season to praise God for the gift of Jesus Christ. But it is also a day when we get very close with out gospel passage to the guiding star of the wise men. So we note the presence of the phrase 'all you shining stars' (v. 3).
Hebrews 2:10-18
Why did Jesus come as a human being? Couldn't (say) an angel save us? Writing to an audience of Jewish Christians (and/or Christians) tempted to revert to a stricter Jewish way of obedience to God, specifically through the system of temple sacrifices, the author of this epistle repeatedly, from many angles, nails down the supremacy of Jesus, greater than the angels, in a different and better order of priests and thus the uniqueness of his sacrifice.
In this passage, relevant to Christmas and celebrating Jesus being born a real human being, the writer tells us that Jesus was really and truly one of us. For instance,
'Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, to that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil ... (vss. 14-15),
and
'For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect ... (vss. 16-18).
Further, these verses tell us that Jesus became like us in order to help us.
Actually, the author to the Hebrews goes even further than that. Jesus became a human being in order that (generally speaking) he might save humanity but he was also tested by what he suffered so that 'he is able to help those who are being tested' (v. 18).
Are you wondering what the fuss of Christmas is all about? It is about you!
Are you wondering if in the particular predicament in life which you face right now, Jesus can help you? He can! (It would be worth turning a couple of pages in Hebrews to chapter 4 verses 14-16, where we are encouraged to take what troubles us to the Lord in prayer so that 'we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.').
Matthew 2:13-23
An oddity of church history combined with the lectionary means that this Sunday we read Matthew 2:13-23 (Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt) and next Sunday (should we celebrate the Feast of Epiphany one day early) we would read Matthew 2:1-12 (Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ).
Matthew is consistently Josephite in his narratival point of view.
Here Joseph receives another appearance of an angel of the Lord in a dream and there will be a third such appearance before the end of this passage. Joseph, like Mary in Luke's birth and infancy narratives, is obedient to the Lord. He takes 'the child and his mother by night and went to Egypt' (v. 14).
Note that Herod (whether Herod the Great as in this story or his various successor sons in later stories) is something of a dangerous 'type' in the gospel stories. Here the danger is greatest when Jesus is at his most vulnerable. Accordingly the narrative takes Jesus out of the danger zone around Bethlehem (with one dream warning to Joseph) and later brings him back to the mission zone of Israel (with another dream).
Laced through this passage is Matthew running riot with his Israelite scriptures!
He has already relied heavily on them to compose his opening, seventeen verses concerning the genealogy of Jesus, connected, delved into the prophets to connect the special circumstances of Jesus' conception with God's previously foretold plan (1:23/Isaiah 7:14) and to connect the obscure and humble place of his birth, Bethlehem, with that same plan (2:6/Micah 5:1,3; cf. 2 Samuel 5:2).
In our passage today, Matthew:
Links the flight to Egypt (2:14-15) with Hosea 11:1 (and in the process creates an identification between Jesus son of God and Israel (to whom Hosea refers) son of God.
Explains the horrific Herodian massacre of infants in and around Bethlehem as a fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah (2:18/Jeremiah 31:15).
Explains the shift of home for Joseph and his family, from Judea to Galilee, to Nazareth in particular as yet another fulfillment of prophecy (2:23/echoing Isaiah 11:12 and Judges 13:5).
What is Matthew up to, here and elsewhere in his gospel as he sees fulfillment of the Israelite scriptures writ large in the life and times of Jesus? Two thoughts.
One, for a largely Jewish readership, Matthew is proving that Jesus is the Christ, the long ago foretold anointed new King David sent from God. (Whether we think such an approach 'proves' anything is something to think about, but we should not mistake any doubts we have about this method with any doubts we have about whether this was a good way to proceed in Matthew's day).
Two, for a largely Jewish Christian readership, Matthew embeds the new things God is doing through Christ and his movement with what God had done through his patriarchs and prophets of old. This (Christ, Christian movement) was that (foretold and anticipated long beforehand by the God of Israel's servants).
Nevertheless, upbeat though we are, reading about Jesus as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, we confront a terrible, terrible event which illustrates acutely and desperately the age old problem of evil in a world created and presided over by a good God: the slaughter of the innocent children (always remembered on 28 December as 'Holy Innocents' for which the gospel reading is Matthew 2:13-18). The tragedy is all the more appalling, we could say, because if Jesus had not been born, these children would never have died.
A long answer to questions raised by this massacre within the narrative would be very long (i.e. the attempt by theologians through the centuries to resolve the 'problem of evil' or 'problem of suffering.')
A shorter answer is to note some things Matthew says explicitly or implicitly through his gospel, if not within the passage itself.
(1) Matthew does not say that Jeremiah explicitly foretold in detail a slaughter of the kind which happened, as though a more attentive reading of Scripture might have led to more responsible people avoiding this tragedy. He draws attention to a saying of Jeremiah about a situation in which Rachel (whose tomb was near Bethlehem) and thus Judah is in great sorrow. No one could have predicted from Jeremiah that the Herodian massacre would take place, let alone be tied to the birth of Jesus. Matthew with hindsight recognises Jeremiah as seeing ahead to a time of sorrow and realises that that time had now happened.
(2) Matthew pins the blame for this shattering event on the choice of a powerful human, Herod the despotic and tyrannical king. God has not orchestrated this to happen (e.g. in order to fulfil the saying of Jeremiah). 'Man's inhumanity to man' results from human capacity to choose to inflict pain on others.
(3) Matthew tells of such awful horrors precisely within a larger account of God's plan through Jesus to transform the world. God is not powerless to alter the course of history but (it is implied) does not intervene in each and every bad moment within that history. Through the coming of Jesus a new way of life, the kingdom of God, is entering the world as a counter to the old and often terrible and terrifying way of life, illustrated by the kingdom of Herod.
In short: there is good news to tell about Jesus because there is bad news to tell about life without Jesus.
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