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2nd SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
Our passages for this post-Christmas/post-New Year’s season offer excellent
opportunities for proclamation. In the spirit of New Year’s beginning, the Jeremiah
31 lesson reverberates with joy and festivity-for God is at work re-gathering and leading
people back home. Renewal and new life in Christ also provides a marker for the beginning
of a new year, topics found in Ephesians 1. And in our gospel reading, we enter the
theologian and poet’s domain to discover the Word who was with God became an
enfleshed Word and who makes known to us the unseen God.
Jeremiah 31:7-14-Raise Cheers! Sing Praises!
"Shout for joy at the top of your lungs!" urges our lesson in the paraphrase
of master phrase-turner, Eugene Peterson. Few words in any language can equal the power
and joy that this text contains. Such exuberant words reflect the joyful return of the
Exiles-a re-gathering, return, and redemption of Israel. This passage is peppered with
"gladness" and "shouts" and invitation to give "praise," and
"dance" and merry-making and "gladness." Jeremiah looks forward to the
restoration of the united kingdom of northern Israel and Judah-both coming to worship
Yahweh in Zion. God will be at the head of the line leading all of them back. What a
vibrant and consoling vision in Jeremiah’s time or for any new year.
Ephesians 1:3-14-Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow
Verse 3 sets up the core of this lesson-Blessed be the God . . . who has blessed us . .
. with every spiritual blessing. What follows is a summary of Paul’s overall
understanding of what is included in God’s blessing of humankind-God’s
initiative to choose, adoption, redemption and forgiveness, illumination into the mystery
of God’s will, a God-bestowed inheritance, and the seal of the Holy Spirit. Such
blessings redound with doxology and praise to God for such providing us with such a
praising and glorious life!
John 1(1-9), 10-18-In the beginning . . . God
Enter the theologian, poet, and culturist who takes common words and fashions them into
a beautiful lyric which forms today’s gospel lesson. The passage contains motifs that
will reappear in John’s gospel: light, darkness, life, true, truth, world, born,
blood, flesh. The lesson closes with the full incarnation that began in verse one: the
Word became flesh and lived among us (verse 14), another testimony from John, and an
intriguing statement about how all of us have received from his fullness grace upon grace
upon grace . . . blessed with every spiritual blessing en christos.
