Lectionary Commentaries for December 22, 2024
Fourth Sunday of Advent

Many will remember Roots, Alex Haley’s 1976 phenomenal book that was a New York Times bestseller for 46 weeks. We will also remember the must-see television miniseries thereafter, as 130 million people tuned in to follow the saga of an American family that began with a 17-year-old Gambian boy named Kunta Kente. 

That book stirred up a thirst for belonging that has not abated. Indeed, the legacy of Roots is that many families even now are eager to find their place, to connect to the past, and to trace their roots—via the National Archives or the Freedmen’s Bureau or DNA kits like 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, and Ancestry DNA.  

As we move into the Advent season, could not the earliest chapters of the Lukan Gospel be our own collective story of Roots—that is, an attempt to trace the roots of Jesus’ prophetic movement? Could not those chapters, especially Luke 1:39–45 (46–55) among them, provide us with a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, as we celebrate with expectancy the arrival of God’s intervention in human society even today?

God knows we need some roots. The strains and stresses of Christianity visible in our society today seem a far cry from the virtuous settings in which the prophetic lives of John and Jesus found their footing. Market mentalities seem to control our vision of this important season. Incessant news feeds remind us of the trauma that church members, especially the young ones, have been forced to face because of high-profile clergy sex-abuse scandals. Furthermore, many Christians have embraced an ultranationalist brand of Christianity—one in which religious zealotry trumps constitutional law. So, yes, God knows we need some roots. And Advent reminds us of at least three of them. 

One root is the celebration of the assurance of God’s promises in others. The Advent story could have been told solely to accentuate the individual statements of praise by Elizabeth and Mary—to tell us what God had done (pepoiēken, 1:25) just for Elizabeth or to tell us what God did (epoiēsen, 1:49) just for Mary. 

Instead, the Advent story brings the two women together (1:39–45), and we see their mutual recognition of what God was doing in the other’s life. Mary greets while Elizabeth blesses. Elizabeth’s “the fruit of your [Mary’s] womb” aligns well with “the child of my [Elizabeth’s] womb.” Huddled together in Judah’s hills, both can visibly see in each other’s pregnancy the assurance of the promises of God in the other. 

This only happened, though, because one of the women (Mary) went on a journey to see the other (Elizabeth). Would we not be rescued from the narcissistic self-interest of our own quotidian affairs if we were placed in the proximity of others? Would we not see the brimming humanity and divinity in all if we did not isolate ourselves through the trappings of gated communities, outmoded notions of what constitutes a family, and retrograde immigration policies? Who is willing to take Mary’s spot today—to travel, to make the journey to see what God is doing in someone else’s life? 

A second root of which we are reminded at Advent is the constancy of God’s mercy. While many see a great reversal in Mary’s Magnificat, and rightfully so, let us not miss an emphasis on the unchanging nature of God’s mercy. As Mary’s song moves from a personal paean of praise to a broader statement on what God had done in the lives of Mary’s people, it emphasizes the constancy of God’s mercy. Such phrases as  “generation after generation” (1:50) and “forever” (1:55) suggest that Mary’s song is not limited temporally to the past nor the present. Whatever God is doing, God is capable of doing it for a long time—forever.

That root of the constancy of God’s mercy is sorely needed. Our world is marked by change: natural changes, like the ebb and flow of the tides; technological changes, like the arrival of phones that are smart, cars that are electric, social media platforms that are plentiful, and Generative AI that is here to stay. Still, though, other changes—declining health, turns of fortune, the loss of a loved one, and even the ups and downs of political election cycles—create anxiety and weigh heavily upon us. In the face of such anxiety-producing change, Advent reminds us of what is constant—the mercy of God. 

A third root of which we are reminded at Advent is the contagion of praise. In a biological sense, we speak of “contagion” in a negative way, as something, like an active form of tuberculosis, to be avoided. In a psychological sense, though, the word “contagion” may be positive. Indeed, in the Advent story of the Lukan Gospel, we see that the idea of contagion can be a positive factor in the spreading of vitality and hope. 

Luke has a contagion of praise. Woven throughout the warp and woof of Luke’s early chapters (and the whole Gospel, for that matter) is a theme on the praise of God. When Elizabeth later gives birth, for example, her neighbors and relatives rejoice with her that God has shown great mercy to her (1:57). Then, Zechariah blesses God for remembering God’s covenant, sworn to Abraham, for what would be all of Israel (1:68–72). 

Then, a heavenly host will praise God for the birth of a Savior (2:14–15). Then, the contagion of praise will move from angels to the shepherds who glorify God for all they have heard and seen (2:20). Simeon will praise God for the child Jesus (2:27–28), and so will prayerful Anna (2:38). 

Of course, all of this contagion of praise starts with two women: Elizabeth, who praises God for what God has done (1:25), and Mary, who praises God for what the Mighty One did (1:49) in her life. 

With whom will the contagion of praise begin in our own communities? Why wait for someone else to start it?  

The prophet Micah was active during a tumultuous period in Israel’s history.¹

According to the book, Micah prophesied during the reigns of the kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, who ruled during the late eighth and early seventh centuries (759–687 BCE). At this time, Israel and Judah experienced great turmoil as the Assyrians invaded the region.

The Assyrians captured Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, in 722 BCE. The southern kingdom of Judah also witnessed military threat. During Hezekiah’s reign, the Assyrian king Sennacherib carried out a military campaign (701 BCE), attacking several towns in Judah (see 2 Kings 18–19; Micah 1:10–16) before retreating from Jerusalem.

As there were threats on the international stage, there were also great changes in the culture. During this era, Judah’s economy expanded and shifted from a barter society to a mercantile society, in which money was traded for goods. According to the prophet, corruption and hypocrisy were rampant. Jerusalem’s “rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the LORD and say, ‘Surely the LORD is with us! No harm shall come upon us’” (Micah 3:11).

God’s promise enters this perilous and pernicious world in a surprising way. The oracle in Micah 5 vows that God’s ancient covenant with Israel is secure and reliable, even as it may come about in an unexpected manner. The oracle provides assurance that God’s covenant with David—the one “from of old, from ancient days”—is eternal and is still operative, even as Judah is under threat. The covenant will be fulfilled with a new leader in the line of David.

Yet this new ruler will arise not from Jerusalem, the royal city, but from Bethlehem, a small village. He will not exercise military might like the Assyrians, but will be one of peace who provides for his people like a shepherd. There are several allusions to David in the image of this ruler, including the new ruler’s birthplace in Bethlehem, which was also the birthplace of David, and his pastoral image as shepherd, David’s occupation.

It is a consistent theme through the Bible that God delights in upsetting human expectations. Abraham and Sarah did not expect to bear a child in old age, and yet Isaac, whose name means “he laughs,” was such a preposterous surprise that it prompted Sarah’s laughter (Genesis 20:1–7). David, who was the smallest of his brothers, was anointed as the king (1 Samuel 16). Likewise, the ruler promised in Micah’s oracle will come from an unexpected place, in an unexpected way.

This divine habit of eschewing expectations also echoes in the New Testament, as Mary receives a surprise announcement that she will bear a child (Luke 1), and as Jesus enters the world not as a triumphant ruler but as a vulnerable infant.

Micah 5 is one of the texts that the gospels reference to interpret who Jesus is. In the Gospel of Matthew, the wise men cite Micah’s oracle to inform King Herod that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:6), and the Gospel of John refers to a group of people who refer to this text in understanding Jesus’ identity (John 7:40–43). In its eighth-century context, Micah’s oracle offers a particular word to a specific community. Yet it takes on new life in God’s ongoing activity of remaining faithful to covenant promises by subverting expectations.

The irony of Advent is that this season of preparation anticipates a hopeful expectation of that which is unexpected. Those who have heard these Scriptures so many times, year after year of Advent celebration, may have trouble fully appreciating their startling logic. Yet perhaps we need look no further than our own lives. Micah calls us to see God’s faithfulness in surprising ways, to look where we might not expect. Micah’s oracle serves as a reminder that the promise of God’s covenant is certain, yet the expression of its fulfillment is not always predictable.

Micah’s oracle speaks to a world that is caught in the bewilderment of violence, uncertainty, and economic disruption. While there is much that separates us from eighth-century Judah, these dynamics are not unlike the world in which we live. We, too, know terror and fragility on national, international, and personal planes. We, too, seek hope that the world will be different. We, too, yearn for security and peace.

The promise of Micah is that God will be faithful and will appear in surprising ways. As Advent draws to a close, Micah invites us to look for God’s presence where we least expect it, and to be attuned to the voices of the small, the powerless, and the vulnerable. Are we prepared to be surprised? Are we prepared to welcome the Holy One into our midst?

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for December 20, 2015.

The Magnificat is Mary’s song of praise to God, which she proclaims as her relative Elizabeth welcomes her into her home. Mary is a betrothed young woman, likely no more than an older adolescent. She has become pregnant prior to the consummation of her marriage. While this is not an unheard-of situation for a young woman to find herself in, Luke makes it clear that her fiancé, Joseph, is not the biological father of Mary’s child.

This places Mary in a precarious situation. In the early first century, when Mary sang her song, during betrothal the man had legal rights over his fiancée, and though they might not be living together yet, she could be called his wife. The engagement could end only through divorce. If she had sexual relations with another man during this time, it would have been considered adultery.

Preachers sometimes cite Deuteronomy 22:23–27, which discusses the circumstances in which a virgin who is violated may be stoned to death, as evidence of Mary’s endangered state. However, it is unknown whether this law was enforced in the first century CE. While Luke likely knew this text, there were other cultural realities that placed Mary in a vulnerable position. Luke was probably aware that women who bore children outside the bounds of marriage were sometimes pressured to abandon their infants. Such a child was a source of shame for the family, and communities were often unwilling to help raise a child of uncertain parentage.

Mary retreats to her relative Elizabeth’s home, perhaps seeking support from the older woman, who is also pregnant. But instead of despairing about her circumstances, Mary proclaims the greatness of God. She declares that God is her savior, the one who has delivered her from an oppressive situation, just as God delivered generations of her people before her. As Mary declares the close relationship she has with God, she proclaims that she is the doulē of God, God’s servant.

This term, doulē, is a troubling word, because it can also be translated as “slave,” drawing to mind the inhumane treatment of slaves in both the Roman and the US context. However, Luke only uses doulē in reference to Mary and uses other terms, like paidiskē, to refer to enslaved females in the Gospel. Thus, it is clear that Luke has a specific meaning in mind here.

In these verses, Luke draws upon Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who also becomes pregnant and pours out her heart to God. In the Septuagint version of 1 Samuel, Hannah refers to herself as doulē, first in relationship to the priest Eli (1 Samuel 1:16, 18) and then in reference to her relationship to God (1 Samuel 1:11). While the image of subordination is still troubling, in the Magnificat it is how Mary describes herself as a proclaimer of God’s word.

Indeed, many scholars argue that Mary is taking on the posture of a prophet, that her words are prophetic, like her forebear Miriam, prophet and sister of Aaron (Exodus 15:20–21). Mary’s song proclaims the goodness of God, who reverses the fortunes of the powerful, bringing them down to the state of the common people, and who raises up the fortunes of those low on the social scale so they will hold a place of status in society. She declares that God reverses the fortunes of those who are hungry, so that food insecurity will no longer reign among the masses; and that those who are rich will not receive handouts they do not need. She then declares God’s deliverance of God’s “servant, Israel.”

Here the Greek word, which the New Revised Standard Version translates as “servant,” is not doulos but, rather, pais, which could mean either “slave” or “child.” In this case, I prefer to translate pais as “child,” such that Mary declares that God has come to the aid of God’s child, Israel, rather than to God’s servant or slave, Israel. “God’s child, Israel” creates the image of a parent helping their child—the same gracious parent Mary has just sung about, who provides food for God’s children in need.

Biblical scholar Amy Krall has written a paper about the Magnificat, discussing four choral versions of Mary’s prophetic words: Palestrina’s Magnificat primi toni, Bach’s Magnificat in D major (BWV 243), Tompkin’s Magnificat (Fifth Service), and Walker’s Magnificat.¹ Krall discusses how these words in Luke’s Gospel, though originally cast as the words of the young woman Mary of Nazareth, have become the community words of the church. Each choral setting of the Magnificat has become a “musical exegesis,” in which the whole church takes up Mary’s song and becomes Mary’s voice.

These four versions of the Magnificat alternate between a solo voice and a choral response. While they vary in which portions of the Magnificat are solo or choral, in each version Mary’s proclamation “All generations shall call me blessed” is sung by the choir. The voice of the whole community embodies Mary’s song of praise. A diversity of voices has taken up her declaration of God as the one who reverses the fortunes of the people, bringing those with little to the front of the line, while those who have much become the supporting voices in their ascent.

This Advent season—a time of year when the country becomes enthralled with having more; when the blaring sounds of “Christmas” drown out the Gospel’s song of what this humble birth means for God’s people—I urge you to embrace Mary’s words as the song of your community. Take forth her proclamation of all that God has done for you and for the least among you. Reimagine what your community can do for all people, so that as Christ enters the world anew this year, it is not to the blast of Christmas lights declaring the excess of this world, but rather as the gentle hand of God’s child reaching out, waiting once again to see what we will do with this good news for all people.

Notes

1. Amy Whisenand Krall, “The Magnificat in Music: Four Interpretations,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Antonio, TX, November 21, 2023.

Some of the people who will worship on the fourth Sunday of Advent in my context will be stressed by expectations that their homes must be clean and festive for the arrival of holiday guests. Exhortations during Advent to prepare our hearts for the arrival of Jesus can raise analogous spiritual anxieties. A sense that we are not meeting God’s high expectations can cool our welcome for Jesus to the point that our celebrations of his birth become superficial distractions from its deeper meaning. 

Hebrews 10:5–10 offers good news for the spiritually anxious and for everyone who needs reconciliation with God. Worshippers could hear it in response to a prayer of confession, or it could be the basis for a sermon on the sufficiency of the forgiveness and cleansing that Jesus provides.

An anonymous author wrote Hebrews during the second half of the first century CE for an audience that needed encouragement to be steadfast in following Jesus despite persecution. The author’s rhetorical strategy includes a series of comparisons highlighting the greatness of Jesus: He is superior to angels, Abraham, Moses, and the other prophets who preceded him. As a heavenly high priest, he is superior to the Levitical priesthood, and his once-for-all-time death on the cross is superior to the sacrifices they offer repeatedly. Hebrews 10:1–18 completes this series of comparisons with its claim that Christ’s perfect self-offering makes Levitical sacrifices unnecessary.

Sermons on this text should not contribute to antisemitism by giving the impression that Christianity has superseded Judaism. Christians have received an astounding gift of reconciliation with God through Jesus. Our Jewish neighbors have also experienced God’s grace, forgiveness, and steadfast love as they respond prayerfully to God’s word in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jews and Christians agree that animal sacrifices are unnecessary for forgiveness.

The text begins with a quotation of Psalm 40:6–8, which Hebrews interprets as a speech by the incarnate Christ upon entering the world (Hebrews 10:5–7). There is a significant difference between the Greek text of Hebrews 10:5 and surviving manuscripts of Psalm 40:6 in both the original Hebrew and the Septuagint (an ancient Greek translation used by the author of Hebrews). The psalm reads literally, “An ear you have dug [opened] for me.” Hebrews 10:5 reads, “A body you have prepared for me.” 

The psalmist’s gratitude for open ears fits the emphasis on obedience in both the psalm and its interpretation in Hebrews. Many prophets with ears open to God have heard, like the psalmist, that repentance and justice are more important than sacrifices (for example, 1 Samuel 15:22; Isaiah 1:10–17: Jeremiah 7:21–26; Hosea 6:6). In Hebrews, the reference to Jesus’ body affirms the incarnation and prepares for “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ” on the cross (10:10). 

Hebrews also reinterprets the enigmatic sentence “In the roll of the scroll it is written of me” (Psalm 40:9; Hebrews 10:7). The psalmist probably meant that scripture applied to his or her situation. The author of Hebrews heard Jesus affirming the interpretive approach used throughout the letter: The Scriptures are about Jesus.

Hebrews 10:8–9 next provides an explicit commentary on the quotation. God’s lack of desire for Levitical sacrifices means they are no longer required despite their prominence in the Torah. Whereas the goal of sacrifices was to please God, Jesus affirms and models another way: “See, I have come to do your will” (10:9). This affirmation comes after the statement that God does not desire sacrifices, suggesting to the author of Hebrews that Jesus’ obedience has taken the place of the sacrifices that Leviticus prescribes. 

Hebrews 10:9 refers in a general way to doing God’s will, but the argument in chapters 8−10 makes clear that Hebrews is contrasting two kinds of sacrifices. Much as the earthly tabernacle was a shadow of the perfect heavenly one, the use of animal blood for purification foreshadowed the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice that Jesus offered on the cross (Hebrews 8:5; 9:13–14; see also Leviticus 4). The author understood that this self-sacrifice by Jesus was God’s will. 

Although Jesus’ death is central to the text, the general reference to doing God’s will in 10:9 invites a broader focus on Jesus’ life and ministry. It was God’s will for Jesus to proclaim in word and deed that God’s end-time reign of justice and peace was at hand. Jesus fulfilled God’s will by eating with tax collectors and other sinners and offering salvation in every dimension of life: spiritual, physical, and social. Jesus demonstrated divine grace as a host as well as a guest, extending a wide welcome to God’s banquet. He repeatedly reminded those who would pass judgment that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6, quoted in Matthew 9:13; 12:7). All these events and more are in view as Jesus volunteers, “See, I have come to do your will.” 

Hebrews also emphasizes that Jesus endured testing without sin, making him uniquely able to empathize with our struggles and to offer a perfect sacrifice on our behalf (4:15). The meaning of his death is inseparable from his obedient life.

Hebrews 10:10 sums up the good news I see in the passage: “And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” This gracious sanctification means we are ready to worship the Holy One without guilt or shame. Unlike some literal house-cleaning, sanctification is not something we must do on our own power. Jesus embraces us with infinite love, just as we are. Then Jesus leads us on a journey toward holiness so we can participate even more fully in God’s reign. Whether or not we have begun that journey, we can release Advent anxieties and welcome Jesus with hearts full of joy.

Works consulted

Attridge, Herald W. The Epistle to the Hebrews. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989.

Bucher, Debra J., and Estella Boggs Horning. Hebrews. Believes Church Bible Commentary. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2024.

Eisenbaum, Pamela. “The Letter to the Hebrews.” In The Jewish Annotated New Testament, 2nd ed., pp. 460–88. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler. 0xford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2017. 

Meshel, Naphtali. “Sacrifice and the Temple.” In The Jewish Annotated New Testament, 2nd ed., pp. 658–62. Edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler. 0xford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Pierce Madison N. Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Recontextualization of Spoken Quotations of Scripture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Ribbens, Benjamin J. “The Sacrifice God Desired: Psalm 40:7–8 in Hebrews 10.” New Testament Studies 67 (2021): 284–304.