Lectionary Commentaries for December 29, 2024
First Sunday of Christmas
from WorkingPreacher.org
Gospel
Commentary on Luke 2:41-52
Meda Stamper
First Reading
Commentary on 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26
Dirk G. Lange
The Christmas season is easily equated with children.1
Children abound—from the surprising and unsettling birth of God-as-child in a manger to this childhood story of Samuel. Hannah, a barren, older woman prays in the temple for a child. Eli hears her, thinking first that she may be drunk, then realizing that she is earnestly praying. He blesses her. Hannah makes promises, vowing to give the child to God. She does then give birth to a son, Samuel, whom she brings and entrusts to Eli. She dedicated this child to the Lord.
The scene described in today’s reading is particularly touching (but also foreign to our sensitivity with regards to children today). A mother willingly surrenders her child to the Lord, entrusting him to others, to serve the Lord. Once a year (we are told), Hannah and Elkanah go up to the temple to perform the yearly sacrifice and as they do, she brings a new robe, new clothing for her young and growing son. Each year anew, Eli would bless them.
The boy is already well versed in his service, wearing a linen ephod (a liturgical/priestly garment). The mention of a linen ephod may or may not be surprising. It is unclear to what extent young boys, serving in the sanctuary, would wear one. (The young king David danced a wild dance in front of the Arc of the Covenant apparently wearing only a linen ephod scandalizing Michal, the daughter of Saul! See 2 Samuel 6.)
The story of Samuel’s origins is perhaps not surprising. It represents a pattern within the scriptural narrative: God choses the marginalized or the downtrodden to break-in upon history. Sarah, like Hannah, was older and barren. Rachel, too, was barren and jealous of her sister Leah. All three women were dealing with “competitors”—either co-wives or servants.
Hannah was taunted by Peninnah, the other wife of Elkanah. These stories finally parallel that of Elizabeth, also old and barren, who then conceives and gives birth to John, the baptizer, the last and greatest of the prophets. Through these surprising and unexpected births, a child is set apart as truly “of God,” dedicated to and willing to serve God.
The dedication to God of this child is complex. Eli and his household are corrupt. Eli’s inability to curb the wickedness of his own sons is continually revealed in these chapters. This blindness is highlighted in the preceding chapter when the prophet Eli does not recognize Hannah’s fervent as prayer but as drunkenness. (Eventually, Eli himself becomes physically blind.) The reader is left to wonder what the young boy Samuel might have suffered in his role as servant to Eli and as the one to prophesy against Eli and his household.
The child Samuel assumes multiple roles. In our short excerpt from chapter 2, we read that he ministers before the Lord and, as noted, wears a linen ephod. He is designated already to be priest and, as we know from the surrounding verses, also judge and prophet. Samuel is the child of transition, transition from the time of judges to the time of kings. This powerless child signifies a radical shift in power and political structure in Israel.
The mention of Samuel’s clothing is noteworthy here on yet another level. The ephod (and perhaps the little robe as well) points towards his ever-increasing role and growing prominence. Samuel will soon carry the people of Israel towards a new identity. In the Epistle reading for this Sunday (Colossians 3:12-21), we are reminded of another type of clothing that the baptized take on: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. We too are called to bear one another, to care for each other in community and the world now not with powerful means but with love.
The lectionary is making a comparison on this First Sunday of Christmas but it is not between the birth of Samuel and the birth of Jesus. Rather it is between the childhood of Samuel and Jesus’s own life as a child. Luke gives us the only story of the 12-year-old boy who stays behind in the Temple, asking questions and astonishing those present with his wisdom.
Mary, unlike, Hannah is not willing to leave her child there and expresses her anxiety to him! There are pronounced dissimilarities highlighted in these stories. The child Samuel, though gift, is still given by his parent to God whereas the child Jesus, as total gift, is entrusted to Mary for care and nurture. One child is “of God.” The other child “is God.”
Reflecting again upon the place of this reading in the Christmas season, we realize that the “child,” as a central theme for these twelve days, is not such a blissful image. The manger scene—already a scene of marginality though this aspect is lost to us through our Christmas folklore—gives way to more violent scenes. On the day after Christmas, the liturgical calendar remembers the young man Stephen, probably not much more than a child at the time, who is stoned to death for his witness to Christ, the incarnate, crucified and resurrection God.
On December 28, the calendar remembers the Holy Innocents—all the children under two who were martyred by Herod in his attempt to thwart God’s plan in Jesus. We hear the wailing, the lament of Rachel. On this Sunday, with the text from 1 Samuel, we remember another child who will become a prophet and the maker and breaker of kings in God’s name.
The season is one of tension and a confrontation with the stark reality of what it means when God enters upon the scene. What does this image of a child contain? How will we grapple with it as preachers and in our prayers? Not the cute, loveable, adorable image we usually conjure up. In the ancient world, being a child was being without rights, a non-entity, subject to death at any whim. Today, millions of children remain equally vulnerable.
The Christmas season reminds us of the precarious form God takes on and the powerless means God uses to accomplish God’s design. A child surrendered to the Temple, serving God in a little ephod, receiving new clothes once a year from his parents. Finally, God assumes those powerless means and becomes himself a child, born in a manger, on the outskirts, dwelling in the Temple—present yet unrecognized.
Notes
- Commentary first published on this site on Dec. 30, 2012.
Psalm
Commentary on Psalm 148
Brennan Breed
Christmas Day and the few days afterward, at least in my North American context, are often a time to focus on ourselves, our own wants and desires, our wish lists, our ability––or lack thereof––to manage the complex expectations of this time of year, our own feelings of loss and sadness. We often need to decompress on these days, take a bit of time off, and try to relax before gearing up for a new year when we return to the world full of––we hope––new energy and high spirits, and so on. We circle around the fire, we hope to unplug from our email, and the worries of the world, and—at least in our ideal version of the holidays—melt away for a few days.
This can be mirrored in our Christmas celebrations: We imagine a small stable, a tiny new family, alone in the cold save a few animals, appreciating the miracle of new life at the edge of the waning old year. But this insular, self-reflective, Victorian-style, cute and inwardly focused Christmas message is starkly at odds with the proclamations that ring out in Matthew and Luke, the gospels that mention the birth narrative: Jesus is the savior of the world, peace on earth, the one who redeems all the people, who gives light to all who sit in darkness––good news of great joy for all the people (Luke 2:10–11). We don’t need to give up the Scandinavian idea of coziness, hygge. But Psalm 148 can remind us about the mind-blowing implications of Jesus’ birth.
In material terms, the descriptions of Jesus’ birth are humble and lonely––a small, poor family alone in what was basically an ancient garage––but in the words of these storytellers, the significance is cosmic. All people, and all of time and space, are wrapped up in this joyful celebration that commemorates the moment the Creator became the creation. As Ian McFarland writes:
In [the act of] creation, God through the Word determines that the gift of being should not be reserved to God alone, and in taking flesh God, again through the Word, determines that this gift should be enhanced to allow creatures to share in God’s very own life. God intends not simply that other entities should exist, but that they should exist in God.1
Christmas, in other words, marks the moment that the cosmos suddenly found itself enhanced: All at once, things didn’t just exist––they now existed in God, since God was now fully and definitively a part of the material cosmos itself. Seen in these terms, the cosmic jubilation described in Psalm 148 shares a lot in common with the Christmas spirit found in the gospels: The ocean and the heavens aren’t lounging in their cozy jammies on Christmas morning. They’re dancing in rapture! We all find ourselves face-to-face with the indescribable beauty and wonder that created the cosmos, who has come in love to know us and to be known by us.
The psalm opens and closes with the resounding call “Hallelujah,” literally “Praise Yah[weh]” (148:1, 14). This inclusio sets the tone for a psalm that uses the imperative form of the Hebrew verb hallel repeatedly. As one of the five “Hallel” songs (Psalms 146–150), this poem does its part to direct us to praise as we close out the Psalter: It tells us to praise no fewer than 12 times. This repetition creates a sense of urgency in its call for literally everything to join in wild, unselfconscious adoration of the Creator. This is no gentle lullaby sung over a manger; it’s an anthem proclaiming that the king has come.
The structure of Psalm 148 clearly mirrors the creation account in Genesis 1: It begins with a call for all to praise YHWH, starting with the heavens above the earth (verses 1–6), then shifting to the earth and all that lives on it (verses 7–14). The psalm moves from the highest imaginable objects in the universe to the lowest in a deliberate arc that demonstrates the structure and order of the cosmos: heavens, then angels, then hosts (ṣabaot, referring to the divine armies that follow YHWH’s command), then sun, moon, and stars, and then the blue sky, or the “waters above the heavens” (verses 1–4).
By calling these often-deified celestial bodies to praise YHWH, the psalmist subtly affirms the sole God’s supremacy over all cosmic powers, echoing the cosmic significance of Christ’s birth proclaimed in the gospels. These massive and awesome objects and beings were created by the divine command (ṣivvah), recalling both the creation by word in Genesis 1 and the commandments in the Torah that structured the community of Israel in Exodus 20–24 and Deuteronomy 12–26. God’s decree that established the cosmos will never falter: The reliability of God is witnessed in the clockwork movement of the celestial bodies, whose very movements are their praise to the Creator (verses 5–6).
Shifting to earth, the psalm calls on a diverse array of created beings to join the chorus (verses 7–10). Again, the list starts with the loftiest things, at least in symbolic terms, starting with the great chaotic sea monsters (verse 7), then moving to atmospheric phenomena like lightning and hail (verse 8), then to mountains and hills (verse 8), and then to the tall trees, large animals and birds, and even lowly creeping things (verses 9–10).
From sea monsters (tannînim, see Genesis 1:21; Job 41) to the deep (tehôm, see Genesis 1:2), from fire and hail to snow and frost, the psalmist leaves no part of creation exempt from the obligation to praise. Even elements associated with divine judgment, like the “stormy wind” (verse 8; see also Jonah 1), are included, suggesting that all natural phenomena, however fearsome, serve God’s purposes. This includes the chaos monsters, the tannînim, like Leviathan: God’s world includes chaos, but as God says in Job 38:8–11, the chaotic sea is God’s child as much as anything else, yet God has prescribed limits to it, and chaos operates within the boundaries of the divine order (see also Psalm 148:6).
Finally, the song ends by focusing on the small, earthbound creatures known as the humans (verses 11–14). The list starts with the “highest” of the mortals, the kings and rulers, moving to vigorous young people, and then ending with vulnerable children and elderly people (verses 11–12). All people, no matter their status or background or ethnicity or religious identity, are called to participate in the enormous shout of joy rippling through the cosmos (“all peoples,” verse 11). This reminds us of the message of Jesus’ salvation: He first appeared as a vulnerable child to marginal people, but was praised by a group of highly educated elite from a distant land and soon evinced the jealousy of even a king (Matthew 2:1–12).
The reason for the praise in Psalm 148 is left for the end: YHWH has “raised up a horn for his people,” a phrase quoted verbatim by Mary in the Magnificat (Luke 1:69). To “exalt” or “raise up a horn” was a symbol of victory, as horns were a potent symbol of power, and even divinity, in the ancient world (see Psalm 18:2; 89:24; 92:10; 112:10; Ezekiel 29:21; Micah 4:13; Deuteronomy 33:17). In the Psalms, the image of the divine “horn” also references the nascent idea of an anointed leader who would rebuild the line of David and restore the people to a place of flourishing (Psalm 132:17).
Psalm 148 was clearly written quite late: It directly references several later biblical texts, such as Genesis 1. It is very possible that Psalm 148 participated in the early shift toward a “messianic” interpretation of the long-awaited resumption of the line of David––and in this way, would have been on the minds of those anticipating the coming of the Messiah, such as Anna and Simeon (Luke 2:25–38).
For preachers addressing this text on the First Sunday after Christmas, the psalm reminds us that Christ’s incarnation is not just for humanity, but for all creation. It invites us to expand our vision of redemption beyond the confines of our immediate social circles and cozy traditions.
In a world often marked by chaos and suffering, Psalm 148 offers unrestrained praise––itself an act of resistance against despair. It calls us to look beyond our narrow, self-centered concerns and recognize our place within a vast cosmos radiating with endless praise.
Notes
- Ian McFarlan, The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2019), 75.
Second Reading
Commentary on Colossians 3:12-17
Chris Blumhofer
Colossians 3:12–17 is an inspiring and lofty vision of what the Christian life looks like. But this vision is not sentimental, and nothing in it is random or boilerplate. Paul is giving practical expression to the teaching that he has just set out two verses earlier (3:10). In that place, he urged the church to put off the “old self” and put on “the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” In the identity that has been renovated by the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the old categories hold no sway: We are not Greek or Jew, circumcised or not, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free. The only identity is Christ (verse 11). The teaching in 3:12–17 presses further into this new life that is based entirely in Christ.
The statement about putting off/taking on clothing in 3:10–11 is derived from an early church baptismal formula (see Galatians 3:27; 1 Corinthians 12:12–13). The believers in the church had very likely heard these words before at their own or other baptisms. Now they are repeated, but with an intense focus on the meaning of baptism for the common life of the community. The thrust of the metaphor is this: We have taken off the clothes that constrain our lives and limit us to living in sin-bound ways. (The list describing this old way of life is in 3:5–9.) We are now putting on the “clothing” of Christ.
We have record that in the early church baptism sometimes took place in the following way: After the candidate had prepared over a period of months (or years), they would come forward for baptism, remove all their clothing, enter naked into the water, and be baptized into Jesus Christ. Upon coming out, the one who had been baptized would be clothed in a white robe.
We do not have record of this exact practice in the earliest churches, but it stands as an enacted exegesis of Paul’s imagery here—an “old self” taken off with one set of clothing removed, a complete identification with Jesus in the water, a “new self” put on that now resembles the holiness and beauty of the One who is the perfect image of God (1:15; 3:10). Many churches today continue to clothe people in white robes when they come to be baptized.
What does this new wardrobe of Jesus Christ look like?
Paul begins by listing five character traits that make up the clothing of the Christian life in the church. Each trait is rooted in the character of God. The terms reward further word study, and a sermon or class could certainly go deeper into any of them. Many are used to describe Jesus in the gospels. Very briefly, we can say the following:
- Paul’s word for compassion here refers to an inner self defined by mercy (literally, “entrails” or “bowels of mercy”). The first usage of this term for mercy in the Greek Old Testament is Exodus 34:6, “The Lord, a God compassionate and merciful.” Jesus shows compassion to the hungry crowds in Matthew 15:37. Christians are, first and foremost, to resemble God the Father and his Son, Jesus, in their posture of compassion.
- Paul regularly envisions God’s kindness in his action to redeem the sinful world through his Son (Romans 2:4; Ephesians 2:7). Thus, believers are also empowered for far-reaching and redemptive kindness.
- Humility is always modeled on Jesus’ example (Philippians 2:1–11).
- Meekness is often used with a particular emphasis on gentleness (Galatians 6:1; Matthew 11:29), and indeed might be thought of as humility plus
- Patience also exhibits the character of God, even toward those who offend God (again, see Exodus 34:6; see also Galatians 5:22).
Clothed with this character, believers are instructed next in verse 13 to “bear with” and to “forgive” (literally, “be gracious to”) one another. The combination is important. Paul expects that life in community will give rise to “complaints,” which then must be handled not primarily with defensiveness or denial but instead with grace and forgiveness. A realistic portrayal of these tensions and needs for forgiveness is captured in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together.
Within the clothing metaphor, the character traits so far are base layers. The final piece is the top layer, or perhaps the belt: “Above [or, “over”] all these, put on love” (verse 14). Love brings these other traits to their completion or, as the New Revised Standard Version has here, into “harmony.” Love is, of course, the defining virtue of God (Romans 5:5; 8:39; John 13:1–8; 1 John 4:16).
Without love, all the virtues of the Christian life are empty and incoherent (1 Corinthians 13:1–3). With love, however, the virtues shine for what they really are: re-presentations in our here-and-now lives of the character of our God, who loves the world and, through sending his Son, has redeemed it to wholeness and joy, holiness and freedom. Love keeps everything in perspective and enables Paul’s next command.
In verse 16, Paul admonishes the church community to “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” In her commentary on Colossians,1 Marianne Meye Thompson points to the “peace” that was established through the blood of the cross (1:20). She notes that the “peace of Christ” is not only inner peace, but it is the life of the community of sinners who were once estranged but have now been brought to life with God and in the company of one another as “one body”: It is in this body (“your hearts”) that the peace accomplished by Christ becomes visible (verse 15; see also 1:21–23).
The peace of Christ rules in the community through the practices of teaching and admonishing one another and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude that is directed toward God. Fascinatingly, Paul connects the unity of the body to both sound teaching and heartfelt, gratitude-filled worship. The practices empower one another and they ground the life of believers in the amazing grace of God, which is surely indispensable to any pursuit of the peace of Christ.
Paul’s soaring admonition in verse 17 calls the believers to see the virtues, behaviors, and practices of their lives as carried out within the identity of Jesus Christ, whom they have just “put on,” and through whom they live in grateful response to God.
Notes
- Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians and Philemon, Two Horizons Commentary Series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 85.
The lectionary ends this calendar year with the first words of Jesus, but before that a festival and a loss and a frantic three-day search. If we have struggled to hold onto the fullness of the Savior in the merriment or stress of celebrating Christmas, this text invites us to turn back with Mary and Joseph and to remember where he will always be found.
This singular childhood narrative of the canonical Gospels marks a conclusion to the birth narrative and a transition to the ministry of Jesus, with a shift in focus from the story of his parents, especially Mary, to the agency of Jesus. Verse 43 says not that his parents left him but that Jesus “stayed behind.”
As the only Passover, or any festival, mentioned in any synoptic Gospel prior to the one preceding Jesus’ crucifixion, this passage points forward to those three days of loss and grief to come, and then to another search and other questions to those who love him: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (24:5), and “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (24:26).
The theme of seeking and finding, of the lost and found, spans the whole of Luke. Instruction on what human beings are and are not to seek accompanies the promise that God wants to give people the best gifts, notably the kingdom (12:31) and the Holy Spirit (11:13; 24:49). Luke also gives us Jesus’ parables of the God of the lost, who does not give up until everyone is found (15:3–32).
Jesus’ parents find him in the temple, where Jesus is among the teachers. From this moment on, the only teacher to appear in the Gospel will be Jesus, but here the 12-year-old Savior, Christ, and Lord of the birth narratives is listening and asking questions. Even as a child, he amazes everyone with his understanding—amazement that will occur again when Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead (8:56) and when the Emmaus pair hear the women’s report of the angels at the empty tomb (24:22).
Luke’s narrative has begun and will end in the temple in Jerusalem (1:8–23; 24:53), and Jesus’ first words are now spoken there. Jesus will again “set his face to go to Jerusalem” in 9:51 and will be on the way to his suffering, death, and resurrection until the triumphal entry in 19:35–40, with the acclamation of the crowds there echoing the praise of angels at his birth.
The verb Mary uses to describe the desperate search for Jesus, translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “anxiously,” is not the verb normally used for worry (Luke 12:22–31; 10:41). It is perhaps more akin to the soul-piercing sword of 2:35. It appears elsewhere in the New Testament only two other times. In Luke 16:24–25, it refers to the rich man’s agony in the flames of Hades. In Acts 20:38, it refers to Paul’s grief-stricken friends when he says they will never see him again. When Mary rebukes Jesus for having left them, she is referring to their agony at the prospect of losing their child.
Jesus, like the angels at the empty tomb, asks why they are searching, and then comes the crux of the passage: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
The word for “I must,” or “it is necessary,” is associated with divine mandate, including the necessity for Jesus to suffer and die and be raised on the third day.
The phrase “in my Father’s house” is not easy to translate because the Greek does not specify to what it refers, but says something like “in the undefined-plural-somethings of my Father.” This has been understood as a place (which, here, is the temple) or as a group of people (in this instance, the teachers) or as an activity (the business or affairs of the Father). But it is perhaps most helpful (although not workable in a written translation!) to leave it open, to think of it as all the somethings—places, people, doings—that advance the purposes of God’s love for the world.
The substance of this is made clear throughout the Gospel: in the poetic praise of the birth narratives, especially the reversals of Mary’s Magnificat; with Jesus’ rebuttals of the devil in the wilderness; in Jesus’ declaration of his mission in Nazareth, which immediately triggers an attempt to throw him over a cliff; in the Sermon on the Plain; in Jesus’ teachings on prayer and his own regular withdrawal from the crowds to pray; in all the parables. Always and everywhere, we see the somethings of the Father in Jesus’ boundary-crossing life, which will ultimately lead to his death but also to his resurrection and the Spirit-filled life of his followers to come.
The somethings of the Father are not easy for everyone to accept. They do not conform to what the devil wants, and they do not conform to what many people imagine they want (or realize they have) in a Savior even now. They transgress societal and religious norms. They are the opposite of politically expedient because they are, as Mary proclaims in the Magnificat and the angel tells the shepherds, for all people, not primarily for the rich, powerful, or the prominent. The somethings of God are for peace on Earth, not victory for a particular person, clan, or nation. They are for Israel and the Gentiles (2:32), for friends and enemies (6:27–36)—for anyone who most desperately needs a savior, which turns out to be everyone in one way or another.
The “child” of 2:48, nestled between references to his mother and his father, is already aware of the overarching call of God. Like the inbreaking of heavenly glory in a pasture, directing the shepherds to a manger, and the angelic praise pointing to both heaven and Earth, Jesus will always hold both the glory and the flesh in himself as son of humanity and Son of God.
His parents do not understand this child whose understanding amazes all who hear him, but Mary holds all of these things, with the words of the shepherds, in her heart—the holding place for the transcendent wisdom of faith—and we may take this passage as an invitation to do likewise.