Lectionary Commentaries for December 25, 2021
Christmas Day: Nativity of Our Lord (II)

from WorkingPreacher.org


Gospel

Commentary on Luke 2:[1-7] 8-20

Joy J. Moore

Luke’s narrative moves to invite us to recognize that the breathtaking account of the birth of Christ cannot be contained in a twenty-minute children’s pageant.1

Grander than “once upon a time” the opening words “In those days” bring notice of a forthcoming rehearsal of a community’s memories, experiences, and hope. Setting aside expectations of a modern historical account, we can acknowledge the dramatic effect presented by the writer’s continued transposing of expectations. What scholars have labored over as a historical quandary proves to offer a pivotal dramatic move. The scene is set in Galilee, against both Rome and Jerusalem, the civic centers of both Gentile and Jew.

That the writer has spent so many words on this problematic census causes us to miss the poetic economy of his simple announcement of Jesus birth. Firstborn—fulfills prophecy, confirms Mary’s announcement and claims the one thing Joseph has to offer—the first son’s birthright as a member of the house of David. Our narrative imaginations must be converted to recognize the power of this brevity.

Tying the birth of John to Jesus, we experience the intimacy of the family and community celebrating John’s birth. Comparisons to the universal and cosmic responses to Jesus’ birth by angels and shepherds signal that redemption is not merely for one ethnic group, but for all creation.

The writer has neither wasted words nor gotten sidelined by a random vantage point, instead drawing together the political context with the promise of Israel’s deity. What first-century hearers might have failed to notice as sacred confession would be recognizable as societal conflict. This astonishing announcement of the arrival of prosperity is not made to the governor or the Emperor, but to peasant shepherds; not to elected officials, but hired hands. Then, as now, the broadcast of this birth turns civic contracts on their heads.

The Governor’s census locates the birth in Bethlehem. Rather than a demonstration of Quirinius’ control, Luke narrates this as the achievement of God’s promise from Micah 5:2. All the echoes of politics and religious culture merge as the listener negotiates the promise of good news between the Greco-Roman world’s imperial cult and the Isianic vision of the coming of the Lord to bring salvation and establish his dominion of peace.

In a time of political posturing and an inequitable economic system, the gravitas of the impending promise is laid against the existing chaos. How pervasive is the peace promised? Who will receive its benefits? Does this program allow for limited participation or an entirely new experience of goodwill by all? Luke blurs the holy with what is ordinarily human, to announce the presence of God with us. As we prepare to tell the story again, consider not only the ancient textual criticisms or familiar myth. Explore also its theo-political dimensions as a living and active drama which narrates us into God’s panorama of peace.

Roman orators and poets would announce the arrival of peace at the birth of the one who will be the next emperor.  Luke tells us God shows up in the ordinary and the heaven’s respond in a chorus of awe. Mere shepherds take notice, as if gazing upon a bush that burns without being consumed.  The declaration that is heard glorifies God and promises what God does for us to bring peace.

What God does “for us” always arises out of a covenant to be “with us” always. God with us is not a political promise to provide “for” a balanced budget over the next decade. God is with us in the present now: “with” those in poverty, the forgotten, and oppressed. Like the shepherds, we are witnesses to the presence of God among us.

And when we see what God is doing, as reflections of the divine image, we are to go and likewise do. Luke prepares us for such corresponding behavior by demonstrating the hopes of Israel in the drama of the birth of John and Jesus. Having already narrated parallels between the births of John and Jesus, Luke’s presentation continues to highlight the inclusive nature of the divine promise that extends goodwill to all. With this narrative move, Luke exposes John’s ministry as focused on Israel while Jesus’ ministry fulfills Israel’s universal purpose.

Israel’s God promises and delivers peace to the entire world, not merely the elite inhabitants of Caesar’s government. The pattern here is seen between the wandering outcasts and the homebound census travelers—unnamed shepherds, and Joseph and Mary, natives of Bethlehem—Rome’s resident aliens. Within the framework of the narrative, this peculiarity prepares for its corollary in the ensuing journey of Joseph to Bethlehem and the latter journey(s) of Jesus.

The ancient story Luke recorded is dramatized in the church’s witness today. The church can be invited to understand that our celebrating the birth of Jesus in this global seasonal holiday extends the drama narrated by Luke.

Notes

1. This commentary was first published on this site on Dec. 25, 2011.


First Reading

Commentary on Isaiah 62:6-12

Karl Jacobson

This reading from Isaiah 62 is filled with striking and preachable bits and pieces. This is not to say that this passage is incoherent, rather that there are any number of places from which a sermon might spring.

Take the opening verses:

Upon your walls, O Jerusalem,
    I have posted sentinels;
all day and all night
    they shall never be silent.
You who remind the Lord,
    take no rest,
and give him no rest
    until he establishes Jerusalem
    and makes it renowned throughout the earth.

The sentinels, elsewhere read as “watchmen” (see also Psalm 130 in older translations), were literally “ones who watch,” guards meant to look over the city. Earlier in Isaiah this idea is used as a metaphor for Israel’s leaders, whom the Lord describes as “blind,” “without knowledge,” “silent dogs that cannot bark” (56:10; compare Ezekiel 34). 

What we find here is something different, with the sentinels called to “bark,” but to bark not in warning to the people, but to bark at God, to remind God that God must establish and empower Jerusalem. The word translated here as “remind” is probably not strong enough. This is a participle, mazkirîm, naming the ones who, literally, “cause to remember.” In this case it is the LORD who they are to make remember, to forcefully call to mind God’s responsibility—taking no rest themselves and giving no rest to God, keeping at it all night if need be. I might suggest that “demand that the LORD remember” carries the intensity of the sentinels’ “barking” better. This insistent, repeating, demanding calling out to God would be well compared to the psalms of complaint, or to Jesus’ own description of insistent prayer (see the parable of the unjust judge in Luke 18), the kind of prayer which we, too, may pray.

Another preaching possibility is in the reversal of (mis)fortune in verses 8-11:

The Lord has sworn by his right hand
    and by his mighty arm:
I will not again give your grain
    to be food for your enemies,
and foreigners shall not drink the wine
    for which you have labored;
but those who garner it shall eat it
    and praise the Lord,
and those who gather it shall drink it
    in my holy courts.

While the first part of Isaiah would have been a contemporary of the prophet Amos, this reading from Isaiah would have been somewhat later, and offers a strong contrast with Amos 5, which call sinful and corrupt Israel to task:

 They hate the one who reproves in the gate,
    and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.
11 Therefore because you trample on the poor
    and take from them levies of grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone,
    but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
    but you shall not drink their wine.

According to the LORD in Amos, because they have despised God’s truth and have exploited the poor, they will not live in the houses they have built, or drink the wine produced by their vineyards. But Isaiah 62 reverses this misfortune. Never again will this happen, that Israel’s grain and wine (and homes) are given to their enemies. The theme here is of restoration, of God, not unlike in the Exodus story, hearing the people’s groaning and remembering the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 2:24). What we have in the restoration, in the invitation to return to Jerusalem (verse 10), is recompense, a sort of re-exodus, introduced by the phrase that is universally evocative of the exodus event, “by his right hand and by his mighty arm.”

Either of these first two possibilities could prove ample fodder for the sermon. But further, these two ideas—that it is ours to demand that God be God and keep God’s promise, which in turn gives rise to hope in the promise of the restoration from diaspora to the Promised Land—move surely into what is another powerful vocational description of God’s people.

When salvation comes—and it will because it has been promised by the Lord—then the people shall be called:

“The Holy People,
    The Redeemed of the LORD”;
and, “Sought Out,
    A City Not Forsaken.”

These designations are reminiscent of Moses’ charge at Sinai to tell the Israelites who they are, and what they are to do/be:

Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation (Exodus 19:5-6).

Which is picked up in in 1 Peter 2:9:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 

This is how God’s people are called, both that which they are called, “holy, redeemed, sought out, not forsaken,” but also the manner in which they are called. There is an important word used in verse 10 that might be easily overlooked, but which draws out eye and ear to the calling by which the people are called back to Jerusalem and God’s presence. That word is “ensign” (Hebrew, nēs). The nēs is a critical concept in the book of Isaiah, frequently employed as sign or signal of, and a call to restoration. 

5:26 He will raise a signal for a nation far away,
    and whistle for a people at the ends of the earth;
Here they come, swiftly, speedily!

11:10, 12 10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal (nēs) to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

12 He will raise a signal (nēs) for the nations,
    and will assemble the outcasts of Israel,
and gather the dispersed of Judah
    from the four corners of the earth.

49:22 Thus says the Lord God:
I will soon lift up my hand to the nations,
    and raise my signal (nēs) to the peoples;
and they shall bring your sons in their bosom,
    and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders.

Standing on the brink of a new year, the proclamation of the Gospel, beginning now with the story of the Christ-child’s birth, the time is right for the raising up of a nēs, pointing forward. 

As the great Christmas hymn has it, 

“Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you;
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.”

This is the ultimate (as in final) nēs inviting us to see that, “your salvation comes; his reward is with him.”

And so we are a holy people, redeemed, sought out, and never forsaken, called now to be that ensign raised up, pointing to the One who brings salvation.


Psalm

Commentary on Psalm 97

Rebecca Poe Hays

Christianity is, in many ways, a faith built on paradoxes.1

Old and New Testaments alike bear witness to a God characterized by both mercy and justice, both grace and truth (John 1:14). This God we worship is both One and Three, both transcendent and immanent—and this God teaches us that power and victory come through weakness and submission (Philippians 2:5-11), that the last will be first (Mark 10:31), and those who seek greatness should become servants (Matthew 20:25-28).

Reading Psalm 97 at Christmas reminds us of these paradoxes. Today we gather with shepherds around the manger where a young, displaced mother has laid her new baby boy, and we celebrate the fact that “God with us” means we have an intercessor who has experienced all our vulnerabilities, fears, and hurts. Today, we also rejoice with all creation that this powerless infant reigns as God of the universe. On Christmas Day, Psalm 97 gives us an opportunity to place the Nativity in its larger theological context and revel in one of the central paradoxes of our faith.

The theme

Psalm 97, an “enthronement” or “Yahweh is king” psalm, is part of the collection of Psalms 93-100 that reflects a major theme in Book IV of the Psalter: no matter what seems to be going wrong in the world, we can have confidence that God reigns over all. Most of the “Yahweh is king” psalms, including Psalm 97, begin with the proclamation “Yahweh is king!” or “Yahweh reigns!” These psalms may have been read each year at the temple as part of a fall festival in which the people would dramatically reenact and celebrate Yahweh’s enthronement.2 The vivid language and imagery certainly lends itself to community performance—whether in the Second Temple period of Israel or in a twenty-first century church.

The “Yahweh is king” psalms highlight different aspects of Yahweh’s reign and its practical implications for our lives. The Psalter largely took shape during a time when Israel held little to no political power. Psalm 97’s prompt to confess that “Yahweh is king” is not the triumphant shout of privileged movers-and-shakers. Instead, it represents a desperate cry of hope for those who look around and see the effects of human injustice and evil intentions. In particular, Psalm 97 encourages those who read it to remember that God is the only true hope we have: the idols and false gods we build up for ourselves—whether in the form of golden calves or political parties or personal accomplishments—are powerless to bring real justice, reconciliation, wholeness, peace, and joy.

The text

Psalm 97 unfolds in three sections. As the psalm unfolds, the psalmist slowly builds up a picture of Yahweh’s character: powerful (verses 3-5) and glorious (verse 6) and exalted (verse 9), but also righteous and just (verses 2, 8) and concerned for the vulnerable (verse 10).

The first stanza (verses 1-6) describes a “theophany,” an appearance of God to humanity—all humanity, as the psalmist emphasizes by saying “the many coastlands” will be glad (verse 1) and “all the peoples behold his glory” (verse 6). The imagery of dark storm clouds, fire, lightning, and earthquakes is standard language for describing times when God appears physically (compare with Exodus 19-20, Deuteronomy 5, and Psalm 18). These are dramatic, terrifying occurrences, and they stand in sharp contrast to the physical appearance of God in Christ. When Yahweh appears in Psalm 97, the whole earth shifts in response; when Jesus appears in Bethlehem, most people remain unaware that something radical has happened.

The second stanza (verses 7-9) spells out what Yahweh’s reign means for worship. Yahweh does not share the throne. Originally written in a polytheistic context, verses 7-9 proclaim that the gods of the nations surrounding (and even dominating!) Israel were nothing compared to Yahweh. At a time when a god’s power was judged by the military and economic status of its worshippers, Psalm 97 makes the bold declaration that no matter how strong a human king might seem, he’s a shameful fool if he bases his strength on “worthless idols” rather than the true God. Ultimately, everyone—even the false gods of Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and the twenty-first century—will bow down before Yahweh, the bringer of justice (verses 6a, 8b).

The final stanza (verses 10-12) describes what implications Yahweh’s reign has for the lives of worshippers. Yahweh brings justice and righteousness to a world characterized by false justice (verses 8b, 10b), so Yahweh’s worshippers should also seek justice and righteousness in the world (verse 10a). This call to “hate evil” and the assurance that Yahweh will “guard” and “rescue” those who do so (verse 10b) acknowledges that the world is not yet at peace, but it also confidently assures us that the same God whose glorious throne is hidden by clouds and fire reaches down to care for “the upright in heart” (verse 11). In Psalm 97, divine judgment merits rejoicing because it means the restoration of justice in the world (verse 12).3

Psalm 97 and Christmas

Psalm 97 puts flesh on the bones of the angel’s announcement to the shepherds that the birth of Jesus would be “good news of great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10). This psalm gives us a picture of who this glorious “God in the highest heaven” really is and how God’s work will bring peace on earth (Luke 2:14). And it confronts us with the paradoxical truth that the mighty God of Psalm 97 is the same God-child “lying in the manger” (Luke 2:16): “Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!”


Notes:

  1. Commentary first published on this site on Dec. 25, 2018.
  2. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2, trans. Linda M. Maloney, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 495.
  3. W. Dennis Tucker Jr. and Jamie A. Grant, Psalms, Volume 2, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 430.

Second Reading

Commentary on Titus 3:4-7

Edward Pillar

As we celebrate Christmas together and give thanks for the wondrous gift of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can go deeper in the mystery of God in our reflections on this passage.

Titus 3:4-7 forms a glorious couplet with 2:11-14 communicating the glory of the appearance of salvation. Whereas in 2:11, Paul speaks of the appearance of the “grace of God,” here he fills out what he means by that “grace.” The grace of God is “goodness and loving kindness” and also “mercy.” Paul is articulating the inner reality of the character of Godthis is what God is like. 

The kindness of God

“Goodness” here is better expressed as “kindness.” It is a basic quality of the character of God. So easily trivialized and looked down on, kindness is one of those character traits which, when worked out, have the power to change the world. 

After the Day of Pentecost, when Peter and John enact the healing of the paralytic at the Beautiful Gate in Jerusalem, and begin to proclaim the resurrected Christ to the people, they are arrested and called to account for what they are doing. Peter seems to express surprise that they are being called to account for an “act of kindness” (Acts 4:9). 

Kindness is a natural aspect of the life of those who follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The kindness of Peter and John, and our acts of everyday deeds of kindness to our neighbors perhaps not so dramatic in naturereflect something of the heart of God.

Indeed, God’s goodness/kindness here is linked with “loving kindness”literally, love of humanity. What better way to express the grace of God? Sometimes kindness may not come very naturally to us, but through choosing kindness we both express and grow in love of humanityeven the lowest and least, and those whom we perhaps may not consider worthy. 

It is worth noting that Jewish Roman philosopher Philo, living at the same time as Jesus of Nazareth, highlights kindness and love as the normal and highly anticipated behavior of the Roman Emperor Gaius, who is expected to act from a position of strength of character. Maybe Paul is deliberately making a contrast here: the integrity and faithfulness of God in the revelation of his kindness and love in the Lord Jesus Christ, against the fragility of these character traits sometimes seen in the powerful Emperor. Additionally, we may reflect that in Christ, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, these traits of the exemplary imperial ruler should now be seen in the everyday lives of disciples of Christ.

The salvation of God

When the true character of God was revealed, God saved us. We could pause here – although the text technically flows on quite naturally. But to pause and reflect that God’s salvation is rooted in God’s beautiful charactera character of goodness, kindness, love, and mercy. The simplicity, and down-to-earth-ness of Christmas reminds us of the beauty and immanence of God’s salvation seen in the life, teaching, and character of the Lord Jesus Christ (3:6).

Salvation, Paul highlights, comes to us not through our “works of righteousness,” but through God’s mercy. “Works of righteousness” may be better articulated as acts of justicethey are not spiritual acts so much as acts of justice in the everyday. But, this is Paul’s reflection, that we have not been rewarded for acting justly, far from it. Acts of justice are precisely what have been missing from our lives. Nonetheless, as Paul elsewhere makes clear, “while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

The mercy of God enacted in saving us is a term found also in the conclusion of Jesus’ telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The neighbor to the one in need was the one who showed mercy (Luke 10:37), reminding us again of the down-to-earth-ness of kindness and compassion.

The transforming gift of the Holy Spirit

Our salvation is mediated through the Holy Spirit, who washes us for rebirth and renewal. While the terms here are rare, it is most likely that there is an allusion here to baptism. Baptism marks our new beginning. But, while we may be baptized as children, or perhaps as adults, delayed sometimes for many years after our initial confession of faith, Paul is suggesting that the Holy Spirit’s activity is both inner and outer. The Holy Spirit works internally to transform our character (see also: Romans 12:2) and externally in works of goodness, kindness, and mercy.

We need to note that while the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon us is abundant and rich it is also inextricably linked with the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no gift of the Spirit without the Lord Jesus. And in this we become heirs, inheritors of the kingdom of God. To speak of heirs at Christmas time is to remind ourselves that to be born of the Spirit is to begin to take on a family likeness. The same goodness, kindness, mercy, and love found in the gift of the Lord Jesus begins to be reflected in us.