Tag Archives: Isaiah

Matthew: “Jesus is the Light!” Jesus: “You are the light!” (5th Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/8/2026)

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Readings

Last week we heard the prophet Micah: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” This week’s reading from Isaiah is working the same question. We might hear it as fleshing out Micah’s answer:

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

Doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with God: both about responding to specific needs and reknitting the torn fabric of our culture, recovering our common humanity.

And, like last week’s psalm (Psalm 15), Psalm 112 offers a portrait of those who do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God. But it does something more, and, heading towards today’s Gospel, it’s worth noticing. So please turn to pp.754-755 of the BCP. Both psalms are acrostic, each line ordered—after the initial “Hallelujah”—by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, running from A to Z, as it were.

Back in Genesis we hear “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (1:26); we might hear these two psalms as a meditation on how that plays out.

The divine-human relation is certainly not symmetrical. Both psalms begin with “Hallelujah!” (Not first “Praise Yah” and then “Praise Us.”) The first psalm ends with “the fear of the Lord;” the second begins by declaring “happy” (there’s that word again that we met in last week’s Beatitudes) “they who fear the Lord.”

What is striking is the celebration of image/likeness, in the identical vocabulary (in Hebrew) in vv.3-4:

111:3b and his righteousness endures forever.
112:3b and their righteousness will last forever.

111:4b the Lord is gracious and full of compassion.
112:4b the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.

The celebration continues, taking the differences of scale into account. The Lord is generous (vv.5a, 6b, 9a), as are the righteous (vv.5a, 9a).

Besides the Creator/creature difference, perhaps the most obvious difference is that the Lord is unopposed; the idols of the nations are not worth mentioning. The righteous, on the other hand, live in the midst of the wicked. And here’s where the psalm notices a corollary to the fear of the Lord. The righteous fear the Lord. So they do not fear evil rumors (v.7), they do not “shrink” (v.8, same Hebrew word). A proper fear/reverence of God puts others who demand our fear into perspective.

Today’s Gospel: the middle section of Matthew 5. Last week we heard the first section, the Beatitudes, another fleshing out of Micah’s “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” The third section, that series of “you have heard…but I say to you,” gets preempted this year by Lent.

So what’s in this middle section?

First, the hearers as salt and light. Salt is an open-ended metaphor, inviting us to meditate on it, and see where that meditation leads. Light, on the other hand, is an image Matthew works with repeatedly. Probably the most important connection would be in Matthew 4, citing Isaiah: “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned” (4:16). That would be Jesus. Then in today’s reading: “You are the light of the world.”

It’s the same move made in that Isaiah text that begins “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me” (61:1) that Jesus reads in the synagogue in Nazareth. By v.3 the text is talking about those whom the speaker has touched:

They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations. (Isa 61:3b-4)

That, as you probably recognize, is the same project our first reading from Isaiah 58 was describing. Parenthetically, it’s easy to focus on Jesus as the light of the world, the generous God of Ps 111, and postpone “you are the light of the world” and Ps 112. In the first we’re the beneficiaries; in the second we’re also the agents. But it’s a package deal.

The Beatitudes: an implicit description of both Jesus as light and Jesus’ followers as light.

The second part of today’s Gospel is the lead-in to the “you have heard…but I say to you” section. Whatever Jesus is doing there, it’s fulfilling, not abolishing the law and the prophets. Since Lent is preempting hearing vv.21-48 this year, a couple general comments:

First, throughout the section we might more usefully translate “you have heard…and I say to you.” Jesus is fulfilling, not abolishing.

Second, Jesus’ words are addressed to us more as a parish than as individuals who happen to be in a parish. So the question they’re repeatedly asking: How do we live together in ways that support hearing and responding to these words?

Third, Jesus ends the section with “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s not about our being sinless. Recall the Beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” Jesus recognizes that we’ll always need mercy. And later in the Gospel: “Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times’” (18:21-22). What’s the point, then? It’s a replay of Ps 111-112’s insight: imitate this generous God. And we might recall Vince Lombardi: “Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

We need, Jesus tells us, to up our game; this third section (vv. 21-48) provides examples.

Two more things and I’ll close. Paul’s contrast between God’s wisdom and the wisdom of this age maps in interesting ways on Jesus’ words. The wisdom of this age regards the Beatitudes as folly. Ditto Ps 112. This world’s wisdom: happiness consists in imitating the carnivores, the more powerful and brutal the better. That can generate a lot of fear, so Ps 112’s implicit call to nurture our fear/reverence of God as a sort of vaccination remains relevant.

Second, there’s important tension between this week’s “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” and last week’s “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (5:11). It’s not that the disciples’ different actions are eliciting different responses; it’s that they have little control over the response they’ll receive—as Jesus had little control. His actions were celebrated by the crowds pretty much until Holy Week. John Howard Yoder nails it: “The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship between cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.”[1]

How to pull this together? I think Matthew would be happy for us to return to Ps 112:

Hallelujah!
Happy are they who fear the Lord
and have great delight in his commandments!

[1] Cited in Hauerwas, Matthew, p.72.

Fear and Light (3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/25/2026)

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Readings

Today’s readings: such a mixed bag! The Gospel continues Epiphany themes—more on that later. The reading from Isaiah: presumably selected because Matthew quotes from it. Psalm 27: perhaps because it’s ‘light’ (“The Lord is my light”) echoes the light in Isaiah and Matthew. 1st Corinthians: well, this is when the lectionary wants us reading 1st Corinthians. Nevertheless, because all the texts are talking about the same God and the same humans, there are some interesting connections.

Today’s psalm: besides the light image, an exploration of what to do with fear. The psalmist celebrates God’s deliverance in the past, but there are still enemies out there. Verse 10: “Hearken to my voice, O Lord, when I call; / have mercy on me and answer me.” Then there’s the psalm’s last verse, omitted by the lectionary: “O tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure; / be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; / wait patiently for the Lord.” The Lord’s timing only sometimes matches our preferred timing, so patience is necessary. What to do with fear? Acknowledge it, but don’t give it the steering wheel. God has been faithful in the past; God will prove faithful in the future; we can bring even our fear before God. Recall the saying attributed to Winston Churchill: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Speaking of fear, our Gospel begins with “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested.” Matthew doesn’t mention it, but John the Evangelist tells us that there was a period in which John the Baptist and Jesus were baptizing in the same region (Jn 3:22-24). You never know how narrow or broad these sweeps are going to be, so Jesus, prudently, leaves Herod’s jurisdiction. Galilee is not safe, but safer.

Matthew then pairs Jesus’ move from Nazareth to Capernaum with a citation from Isaiah. Why? Well, probably for at least three reasons.

First, one of Matthew’s recurrent themes (one of our Epiphany themes) is that this Jewish Messiah is good news for the Gentiles. That’s important to the mixed Jewish/Gentile congregations for whom he’s writing. So the phrase “Galilee of the nations” in Isaiah is important.

Second, Matthew, like John, likes that light image. John the Evangelist has Jesus saying “I am the light of the world” (8:12); the quote from Isaiah is Matthew’s equivalent. It’s also a setup for what we’ll hear in the next chapter, toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world” (Mat 5:14). Back in the first chapter the angel said to Joseph “he will save his people from their sins” (1:21); that’s about empowerment.

(Let’s stay with that for a moment. Matthew doesn’t waste time between “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light” (4:16) and “You are the light of the world” (5:14). It’s the same move made in Isa 61:1ff which lies behind the first three beatitudes in Matt 5:3-5, from “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me” (61:1) to “to provide for those who mourn in Zion…  They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations” (61:3-4; italics mine). Easy to focus on the benefits of salvation, but without an equal focus on being empowered and sent (John 20:21), we miss the point.)

Third, in the minds of some, Jesus’ association with Galilee counted against him being the Messiah. From John’s Gospel: “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?” (7:41). And here, I think, Matthew is relying not only on the text he quotes, but on the continuation of the text. The reason for the light and joy Isaiah describes: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (9:6). Galilee is precisely where we should expect the Messiah’s presence to be felt. Matthew sees the situation Isaiah faced prefiguring the situation in Jesus’ time, and builds on it!

Moving on, I think it’s helpful to have Handel’s “For unto us a child is born” ringing in our ears as we read the calling of the disciples, because it gives a sense of the authority of the one doing the calling. One commentator (Boring) sees the story as discipleship stripped down to its essentials. Why are we disciples? Jesus called us.

Circling back to today’s psalm and the beginning of the Gospel text (“Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested”) notice what Matthew leaves implicit. With the combination of Roman occupation and compliant local elites, no occupation is safe, but fishing is usually safer than most. Jesus calls them to leave that, and today’s gradual hymn reminded us of the consequences (“Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos died. Peter, who hauled the teeming net, head-down was crucified” [The Hymnal 1982¸ 661].) “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

After the other readings, the 1st Corinthians reading is almost comic relief. Jesus, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” has called us, and here we are, driven by our fears to seek status through one-upmanship. “’I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’” Almost comic relief, because whatever Corinth needs, it isn’t more darkness, and Jesus really needs those folk to be light.

So perhaps our lessons suggest an additional piece of advice to “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” That would be: “Going through hell doesn’t cancel the need to repent.” Matthew summarized Jesus’ message in today’s reading: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It’s easy to postpone repentance until we’ve—say—gotten rid of the Roman occupation. But that simply guarantees that if we get power, we’ll use it as destructively as the Romans did.

“The Lord is my light.” Let us, with patience, allow that light to continue to do its work within and among us, the work that we know needs doing, the work about which we’re clueless. And we can do so with confidence, for the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace has promised to be with us always.

Christ was born for this! (First Sunday after Christmas, 12/28/2025)

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Readings

[Call and response:] Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

This year that line from the carol we just sang got my attention: “Christ was born for this!” What happens if we put that together with today’s readings?

In our first reading, it sounds like there are two voices There’s the “I” we meet midway through the reading: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent.” That sounds like a prophet, who begins to speak to Jerusalem. The “I” in the first lines? That sounds like Jerusalem personified, celebrating her coming vindication or salvation, so certain that it’s put in the past tense: “he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, / he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”

Why should we gentiles care about that? Recall Isaiah’s vision that we heard a few weeks ago on the first Sunday of Advent:

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’

That’s the Old Testament’s primary vision of how those words to Abraham “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3) are fulfilled. Not by military conquest, but by attraction. Israel’s trust in the Lord nurtures a national life that is so attractive that all the nations want in on it.

Things, obviously, didn’t play out that way, so today’s text from Isaiah looks to the Lord getting that project back on track. We hear the same hope at the beginning of today’s psalm: “The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem; / he gathers the exiles of Israel.” And we heard it in Mary’s song on the third Sunday of Advent:

He has come to the help of his servant Israel,
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever. (Lk 1:54-55)

“Christ was born for this!” And so, some years later, Jesus enters Jerusalem with the crowds shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Mat 21:9) It’s almost within reach: all the Jewish leaders and Pilate have to say is “OK, Jesus, we’ll do it your way” and it’s Isaiah’s vision on steroids.

As we recall every Holy Week, it doesn’t play out that way, and God says, in effect, “OK, this is going to take longer.” So what we encounter in today’s Epistle and Gospel is a focus on adoption. Galatians: “so that we might receive adoption as children.” John: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

Daughters and sons of God! In the context of today’s readings, that suggests attention to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John: “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise” (5:19). Those words to Abraham, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed:” that’s the family project. As daughters and sons, our project.

The same theme shows up in Matthew’s Gospel: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (5:44-45).

It’s not that God has given up on the Jews. As Paul reminds us “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29). But these congregations of Jewish and Gentile believers in all the world—even in Wisconsin—each can be a temple, a place where trust in the Lord nurtures a communal life that is so attractive that all the neighbors want in on it. As Paul puts it, “so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:10).

Isaiah’s vision: it’s been tweaked in unexpected ways. The “mountain of the Lord’s house” is distributed across the globe, also at 6205 University Avenue. But it’s still the endgame:

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’

And for that, as Paul celebrates, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Repairing the world (tikkun olam, as the Jews put it): it’s the family business. “Christ was born for this! Christ was born for this!”

[Call and response:] Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

“The wolf shall live with the lamb”–and Paul’s readers in Rome struggle to make that work! Second Sunday of Advent, 12/7/2025

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Readings

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” So Paul to the Romans in our second reading. Hope: today’s readings flesh that out in some encouraging ways. Let’s dive in.

Whatever else it is, our reading from Isaiah, an exercise in hope.” A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” “Stump of Jesse:” that assumes that things have not gone well. Just a few chapters back we heard Isaiah warning Ahaz “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” (7:9), but Ahaz is showing no sign of that faith; he’s putting his faith in the king of Assyria! Nevertheless, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” The faithlessness of Ahaz—of most of the kings of Judah—will not get the last word. And what a shoot! “With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together…” And what is happening in Jerusalem will get international attention: “On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him…” It sounds like what we heard last week from Isaiah (“Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’” [Isa 2:3]). Hope.

This hope for what God will do through the shoot drives today’s psalm in more general terms: what God will do through any king. Prosperity, international security: yes. The surprise is that what the king is doing focuses almost entirely on defending the needy, rescuing the poor. From the part the lectionary omitted:

For he shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress, *
and the oppressed who has no helper.
He shall have pity on the lowly and poor; *
he shall preserve the lives of the needy.
He shall redeem their lives from oppression and violence, *
and dear shall their blood be in his sight.

God to the king: you worry about the poor; I’ll worry about prosperity and the other nations. The tragedy of Israel’s history: like Ahaz, most of the kings worried about prosperity and the other nations, with the poor toward the bottom of the to-do list. Gentile rulers—to whom the offer is implicitly extended—have tended to do no better. So the hand-copying of Psalm 72 in the centuries before Gutenberg, also an exercise in hope that someone will take it seriously.

So when John the Baptist proclaims “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” that does encourage the hope that God is doing something about those words from Isaiah and the psalm. He’s baptizing at the Jordan, that river that Joshua and Israel crossed to enter the land. It’s a powerful promise: we can begin again. At the same time, there’s that word “repent.” The problem isn’t “those people.” John’s right there with Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” That image of wheat and chaff with which our reading ends? The wheat: not those who don’t need to repent, but those who are doing so. So the first of our brother Martin Luther’s 95 theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

Which brings us to our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans. “Abound in hope:” particularly a challenge in the capital of the Roman Empire, whose legions, architecture, and stories had no intention of going anywhere! Virgil, the Empire’s poet, has Jupiter, king of the gods, saying this of the Romans:

“On them I set no limits, space or time:
I have granted them power, empire without end.” (Aeneid i.333-334)

Living among competing narratives is nothing new! So Paul “May the God of hope–not to be confused with Jupiter–fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” How does Paul think this works, particularly “believing”? Our reading is at the end of a section in which he’s dealing with the challenge of Jewish and Gentile believers living together. Some, in faith, keep kosher and observe particular days; some, also in faith, eat whatever they want and treat all days equally. All are tempted to judge, to enlighten the others. While Paul talks about the groups as the strong and the weak, each group would have seen itself as strong and faithful in contrast to the other groups.

Paul: “Welcome one another…just as Christ has welcomed you.” It’s not a call to toleration (too often simply a temporary ceasefire until one of the groups feels strong enough to resume hostiliities), but to actively supporting each other’s different understandings of faithfulness.

Isaiah: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid.” Lovely words, but Isaiah didn’t have to figure out how that actually works. Paul—and the Romans—do. Wolves, lambs, leopards, kids: in God’s faithfulness all thrown together in Rome’s various house churches. Potlucks are going to stay complicated. (With increased awareness of food intolerances in our congregations, we should be able to sympathize!)

And this welcoming one another, encouraging one another, wolves as wolves and lambs as lambs, is a powerful sign that Isaiah’s words aren’t just words, but a world that God is birthing in their midst. So there’s reason for hope. But it’s a hope that doesn’t come cheap. It means the repenting, the turning, that John the Baptist proclaimed, repenting of the natural assumption that our group’s right, that they’re the ones who need to change, that they’re not sufficiently grateful for our tolerance.

Let’s step back for a minute. To the first century Romans Paul writes “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (14:17). But despite the presence of this section in his letter (14:1-15:13) we Christians have been really proficient at finding equivalents to food and drink over which to divide. Within the Anglican tradition, even over the presence or absence of candles on the altar! The problem is that if we’ve got “Welcome one another,” we also have (from Paul’s letter to the Galatians) “if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!” (1:9). Discerning which is applicable in any given situation has never been easy. Nevertheless, this section from Romans is a standing challenge to our tendency to build walls when we should be building bridges.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Not because hope in itself is a good thing; it depends on what we’re hoping for. Our hope centers in prayers like “Your kingdom come” or “Come, Lord Jesus.” How do we “abound in hope”? As our believing shapes our behavior so that our common life offers glimpses of what we’re hoping for, of Jesus’ presence, of Isaiah’s vision: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”

“Then the eyes of the blind [disciples] shall be opened” (24th Sunday after Pentecost, 11/3/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

Centuries before Jesus, when Solomon’s temple was still standing, the prophet Isaiah, surrounded by the folly that passed for wisdom, spoke of God’s coming salvation. One of his images: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped” (35:5). What might that look like? Today’s Gospel provides one answer, Jesus working at opening the eyes of the disciples.

“As he taught, he said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’”

What do the disciples see when they see a scribe? All the outward signs proclaim honor, but open eyes don’t stop with appearances. Where does Jesus get this? Maybe through recalling stories like the one about the prophet Samuel, sent to anoint Israel’s next king. The Lord to Samuel: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). So, not Eliab, but David. Or maybe through the multiple texts in Proverbs we noticed a few weeks back. A rich man: rich through diligence or theft? A poor man: poor through sloth or oppression? Based on appearances we don’t know. Or maybe from having grown up in the North, where scribes who copy and interpret the legal documents can be seen rather differently than in the capital.

Is Jesus talking about every scribe? Of course not. He is talking about what we see, what assumptions inform what we see.

And, of course, Jesus’ words continue to be passed down also because they speak to new situations. Soon the new churches have bishops, priests, deacons—and the temptations of long robes, preferred seating, etc. are as relevant as ever. But that would be another sermon.

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened.” Jesus keeps working the problem.

“He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’”

What do the disciples see? Which gifts look impressive? Jesus’ mother had sung “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, / and has lifted up the lowly.” Perhaps Jesus is remembering that too. In any case, what they see, what we see, is important also because it determines what we do. We heard Jesus’ brother James a few weeks back: “For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in…” (2:2).

Salvation: Jesus working on our vision—on our hearing, for that matter—so that we treat each other well. A surprising number of our acts of seeing and hearing reflect who we are, who we are becoming.

And sometimes the rich get it right, as our first reading reminds us. It would have been easy for Boaz to write Ruth and Naomi off. He doesn’t. He listens. And as the parts of the text we didn’t hear in the assigned readings make clear, he makes decisions that are financially costly to do right by the women. One result, as the text reminds us in a delightfully understated postscript, King David.

We can close by noticing an additional layer to the contributions to the temple treasury story. Mark puts the story right at the entrance to Passover/Holy Week. At Passover the High Priest, richly attired, accompanied by all the pomp and ceremony Jerusalem can muster, will offer the prescribed sacrifices. At that same Passover, a prisoner stripped of everything, will stretch “out his arms upon the cross.” As we heard in our second reading, the author of Hebrews has no doubt which sacrifice was the more efficacious, the more worthy of honor. If our eyes are open enough to see the value of the widow’s two small copper coins, we just might be able to see the value of that prisoner’s self-offering.

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” So in the coming week who knows when the Lord might nudge us: “What do you see? What do you see?”

Conduits for God’s Future: Christmas Eve 2023

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Readings

Both my brother and I enjoy sci-fi in multiple formats. A couple years back he sent me season 1 of Star Trek: Voyager; who knows what’ll be under the tree this year. As TV series go, my favorite is undoubtedly Dr. Who, particularly as played by Tom Baker. Dr. Who is a Time Lord, who travels through time in contraption called the TARDIS, which, due to a long-standing malfunction, has the outward appearance of a blue English police box.

Time travel has been particularly relevant in 2023. Who hasn’t instinctively reached for the fast forward button at multiple points—or perhaps the reverse button. But life doesn’t seem to come with that sort of remote. So 2023 has had more than its fair share of moments in which we might feel stuck.

And, at first, glance, our readings, particularly the first, are not of much help. “…endless peace…He will establish and uphold it / with justice and righteousness / from this time onward and forevermore.” And Isaiah fills out the vision: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, / and their spears into pruning hooks;” “the wolf shall live with the lamb, / the leopard shall lie down with the kid.” But that’s then and we’re here. Add the devastation that forms the immediate backdrop to Isaiah’s words (“the yoke of their burden, / and the bar across their shoulders, / the rod of their oppressor”) and we have plenty of material for a “Blue Christmas” observance right here.

And yet, Jesus’ birth has something to tell us about this experience of feeling stuck, trapped in the present. For that, we might start with Santa Claus, who started out as St. Nicholas, bishop of Myra (now in Turkey) at the beginning of the 4th century. Nicholas did some of his most important work at night, anonymously distributing food, clothing, and—sometimes—small bags of gold down chimneys to those in need. During the day, he periodically used the full weight of his office to defend the innocent. Eventually the anonymity collapsed and he was honored also in the multiplication of stories about him.

If we wonder what was at the heart of what Nicholas was about, perhaps we could put it like this: he recognized that God invites us to open ourselves so that we become a sort of conduit through which God’s future—the sort of future Isaiah was describing—can flow into the present. He may have been distributing blankets in ad 320, but more than ad 320 was in play.

In this Nicholas was somewhat like Mary, part of whose story we heard in the Gospel. Nine months earlier an angel had appeared to her: would she be the conduit—in a quite literal sense—through which God’s future might arrive? She replied: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.” That was one of the high points; it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to recognize the likelihood of low points in the story from the Gospel we just heard: tired after a multi-day journey, giving birth for the first time, far apart from most of the folk she would have liked around her, making do in the manger. The year was—scholars guess—about 4 bc, but much more than 4 bc was in play.

That invitation to open oneself as a conduit through whom God’s future can flow into the present: that’s an invitation extended not just to Nicholas and Mary, but to each one of us. The birth we celebrate today: unique. The divine invitation to cooperate with God in bringing God’s future into our present: that’s a standing invitation. And God nurtures places like St Peter’s where we can learn together how to do that together.

This opening oneself as a conduit through whom God’s future can flow: what more can we say about what it looks like? Well, that’s the question that drives most of what shows up in the “Sermon” slot throughout the year, isn’t it. For now, it’s enough to say that if we’ve gathered together to celebrate Jesus’ birth, just wait till he starts talking, starts acting. May we—please God—keep paying attention, keep learning.

So, time-traveling that leaves our present mostly untouched—that’s probably not in the cards. Opening ourselves as conduits for God’s future to flow into our present: God’s all over that one. Experiencing ourselves as stuck is not the only option. And so we say: Merry Christmas.