Gospel for December 22, 2019

“Angel appearing to St Joseph” is a photograph taken by Lawrence OP of windows by Clayton and Bell in the south wall at Freeland which commemorate the life of the Virgin.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 1:18-25
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The birth of Jesus begins with what seems to be a scandal.  His mother is pregnant before she has been married to her fiance, Joseph.  And Joseph knows that he has not been with her.

As the readers of the Gospel, we know what Joseph does not:

she was found pregnant by the Holy Spirit.

This is a serious claim, that Mary has not been with another man, but has been impregnated directly by the Holy Spirit.  Joseph reacts as nearly every man would react — he knows where babies come from, and he doesn’t believe this story for a second.  But he is also a decent and compassionate man:

Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, intended to put her away secretly.

Here was his dilemma — according to the law of Moses, a young newlywed bride could be stoned to death if her husband found evidence that she was not a virgin (Deuteronomy 22:20-21).  Pregnancy would certainly apply!

Therefore Joseph wishes to hush up Mary’s “mistake” and put her away secretly. This suggests that he would quietly end the engagement and send her away where she might be safe from condemnation.

Enter divine intervention:

But when he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take to yourself Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.  She shall give birth to a son. You shall call his name Jesus, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins.”

Like his patriarchal namesake, Joseph the dreamer and the interpreter of dreams (cf Genesis, chapters 37, 40, 41), Joseph the son of David receives a message through a dream.  Joseph’s  genealogy, recorded in Matthew 1:1-17, confirms that this obscure man is actually an heir of the greatest king in Israel’s history.

But that isn’t what sets Joseph apart.  What sets him apart is that he believes that this dream is from God.  He accepts the impossible premise that Mary is telling the truth:

 that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

And the Scriptures also corroborate Joseph’s experience:

Now all this has happened, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying,
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child,
and shall give birth to a son.
They shall call his name Immanuel”

Matthew the evangelist is quoting Isaiah 7:14 (see the Old Testament lectionary reading for this Sunday, from Isaiah 7:10-16 for more background).

Not only does Isaiah’s prophecy confirm the virgin birth of the Messiah, it also reveals the nature of Jesus as the divine Son of God.   Immanuel means:

“God with us.”

Joseph is convinced by his dream, and takes Mary as his wife, fulfilling the instructions of the angel:

Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took his wife to himself;  and didn’t know her sexually until she had given birth to her firstborn son. He named him Jesus.

APPLY:  

It is very clear that Matthew and Luke both firmly believe in the virgin birth of Jesus.  This is made clear by the angelic visitation recorded in both Gospels.  In Matthew’s Gospel, the angelic visitation comes in Joseph’s dream.  In Luke’s Gospel, the Angel Gabriel appears directly to Mary. Gabriel confirms that despite her virginity Mary will conceive and give birth to the Son of the Most High who will also be a descendant of David through her bloodline (Luke 1:26-37).  The Angel Gabriel is also named twice in his appearances in the Old Testament book of Daniel (Daniel 8:16; 9:21); and Gabriel also appeared to the priest Zechariah and announced he would be the father of John (Luke 1:19).

When Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, he is corroborating the experience of Mary and the angelic witness to Joseph.  Scripture and experience reinforce one another.

Why does it matter whether or not Mary was a virgin, as the Scriptures claim?  Somewhere in my theological reading over the years I came across the relationship  between the res and the signo of this miracle.

There is the res — the thing itself.  That is the fact that Mary had not had relations with a man.

But then, even more importantly, is the signo — the sign. The sign is what the res (the thing) points to — and what the Virgin Birth points to is that Jesus is the divine Son of God and the human son of Mary.  He is both God and man.  This is of vital importance, because if Jesus is only human, he would not have the power to save us from our sins.  And if Jesus is only divine, he would not be able to identify with our suffering and weakness and temptation.  But in fact Jesus has become like us:

For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

What difference does it make?

Joseph takes the leap of faith — and believes. And he becomes a key participant in salvation history.  We take the leap of faith — that Jesus is Immanuel — and we are incorporated into these mighty acts of salvation!  

RESPOND: 

There is an old saying — you can’t just be a little bit pregnant.  A woman is either pregnant or she’s not.  The same may be said of Mary’s virginal conception — either she was a virgin, or she was not.

The claim of Matthew and Luke’s Gospels, and of the historic Christian church, is that Mary was a virgin.  And this is vital, not because the creeds claim it, or the church has affirmed it historically, but because it is true.  And because it is true, the Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Galilee, and whose hands and feet were pierced by Roman nails, and who bled Jewish blood, is also God with us. 

Lord, the claims of the Gospel don’t depend on whether I believe them or not, or whether I understand them.  But because these claims are true, they confirm for me that I have a Savior who is more than a man, but who has been a human being like me.  You have humbled yourself to come to me, so that you could lift me up to yourself.  I can only give thanks!  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Angel appearing to St Joseph" by Lawrence OP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for December 22, 2019

“The Book of Romans – Wordle style” by Rowen Atkinson

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Romans 1:1-7
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

The Apostle Paul is introducing himself and his message to the church at Rome.  Most scholars agree that he had not yet visited the community of faith in Rome, and that this letter was written prior to his arrest in Jerusalem and his eventual voyage to the Imperial City under armed guard.

Therefore, this introduction is somewhat formulaic, but it also lays out some of the essentials of Christian faith — almost like a creed.

First, he establishes his own authority and credentials:

a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Good News of God….

His allegiance is to the service of Christ, but he also claims equal billing with the 12 apostles because he has been called and set apart to be sent forth to preach the Good News (the Greek root of apostle means one who is sent forth, particularly as a messenger).

Second, Paul establishes the continuity between the revelation to the Jews and the advent of Christ:

….which he promised before through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was born of the offspring of David according to the flesh…

Two things are made clear here — first, that the Hebrew Scriptures are the source of prophecies concerning the coming of Christ; and second, Paul is very much aware of the Davidic dynasty and the genealogy of Jesus as David’s descendant.  Therefore Paul does not see any discontinuity between Judaism and the Gospel.

However, Jesus was more than just the offspring of David according to the flesh.

[Jesus] was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord….

This is truly a credal statement.  Paul will insist that this is an article of faith for the church, i.e., that Jesus has been certified as the Son of God with power by the Holy Spirit, and because of his resurrection from the dead.  The resurrection of Jesus is the essential historical fact of the Gospel, without which everything revealed in the Scriptures falls like a house of cards.  As Paul insists to the church at Corinth:

 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Everything else follows from this central fact.  Because of the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, Paul says:

we received grace and apostleship, for obedience of faith among all the nations, for his name’s sake….

Note the foreshadowing of one of the important themes of the Epistle to the Romans — the inclusion of all the nations.  The original revelation of God’s plan of salvation was revealed to the Jews through the prophets, but it has been made available by faith even to the gentiles (i.e. the nations).

Finally, Paul makes his formal greeting to the church in Rome:

among whom you are also called to belong to Jesus Christ;  to all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints….

All who are called to belong to Jesus Christ are called to be saints.  The Greek word for saint  means holy.  It must be said that Paul has twice mentioned grace in relation to this holy relationship with God.  He will explore grace at length in the book of Romans.  Here we simply get a small preview that holiness is a result of God’s grace (his gift), not a result of human achievement.

His final greeting in our passage is also very notable:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Father and the Son, are mentioned as co-equals.  We can also make the case that the whole Trinity is implicit here, with the mention of the Spirit of holiness in verse 4.

So, Paul has addressed, in this brief introduction, a synopsis of the Gospel:

• The Hebrew roots of the Christian faith;
• The nature of Jesus as Son of Man (the offspring of David) and Son of God;
• The resurrection of Jesus from the dead;
• Justification by faith, which he will explore in great detail in this letter, as well as the grace whereby one may be saved;
• The inclusion of the gentiles in this new covenant;
• and, yes, even the Trinitarian nature of God as Father, Son and Spirit.

APPLY:  

We are reminded that the coming of Jesus and his Good News didn’t occur  in a vacuum.  He came as the fulfillment of the promises of the prophets in the holy Scriptures. 

But it is also true that his resurrection and power are available to all who believe — Jews and Gentiles alike.

And that is Good News!

RESPOND: 

I was listening with some interest to a writer who was being interviewed on the radio.  I only caught the very end of the program, but I heard him say something that caught my imagination.  He said, “When we write well, we think well.”

I’m amazed when I think of how concisely Paul introduces some of the central ideas of his letter to the Romans in just these first few verses.

When I have attended writer’s conferences over the years, we have been encouraged to develop what is called an “elevator pitch.”  An elevator pitch is a very brief summary of our book,  play, or screenplay. If we  find ourselves alone with an editor or publisher or producer, we could reel it off very quickly.  The pitch is limited to one minute — the hypothetical time it would take to ride in an elevator! The trick is to be brief and to get their attention with something different, or something that they need.

It seems to me that every Christian should be ready with an  “elevator pitch” concerning their faith, so that they can share the Gospel with anyone in a brief but compelling way.

Lord, you have fulfilled all your promises to us in Christ, and we believe that you will fulfill all the promises that are to come. May we live with faith and in hope for your kingdom.  Amen. 

 PHOTOS:
"The Book of Romans - Wordle style" by Rowan Atkinson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Psalm Reading for December 22, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This Psalm appeals to the Lord for intervention in a time of adversity.  It is described as a Psalm of Lament.  It is difficult to tell from the context alone if the Psalm was written before or after the exile of Israel.  It doesn’t really matter to the reader, because it is clearly a cry for help in any event. One clue, though, might be the mention of the tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh, which would suggest that the Psalm was written before the Northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed and scattered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.

The imagery of the Lord as Shepherd is familiar to us, and comforting — but then there is the imagery of the Lord sitting enthroned between the cherubim. The cherubim are those terrifying angelic figures who are depicted as the guardians of Eden with a sword of flame, and the close companions of the Lord who bear him up with wings of the wind.  This description of Yahweh is much more intimidating.  There may also be a reference to the winged cherubim made of gold who flank the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies within the temple.

But what does the Psalmist seek? Restoration, revival, salvation.  He cries out for the Lord to awaken, and to make his face shine on them again.  This hearkens back to the Deuteronomic blessing that Aaron was instructed to give as High Priest:

Yahweh bless you, and keep you.
Yahweh make his face to shine on you,
and be gracious to you.
Yahweh lift up his face toward you,
and give you peace (Numbers 6:24-26).

There may also be a reference to the glory of God that accompanies his presence — the same glory that made the face of Moses shine after he’d been in the presence of the Lord.

But there’s a catch — God is now angry with Israel.  The result of his anger is the deep grief of Israel and the derision and mockery by their enemies.  Their grief is expressed in a very concrete image — their very food is drenched by tears, and their drinking bowls are full of tears!

We don’t really know the specific cause of this disruption in their relationship with their God, but it could be any one of many of Israel’s historic setbacks.

The refrain recurs as a kind of litany three times:

Revive us, and we will call on your name.
Turn us again, Yahweh God of Armies.
Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.

And what is the source of that salvation?  The Christian reader can’t help but read into the Psalm a messianic prophecy:

Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself.

The phrase  son of man  may have many meanings, but one that is inescapable for the Christian is Messianic.  Jesus uses this phrase repeatedly in the Gospels when referring to himself.

APPLY:  

At some point we all know how it feels to be defeated, demoralized, in despair — as a nation, a family, an individual.  The cry of the Psalmist isn’t far from the experience of any of us.

We have all tasted our own tears of grief or shame; and we probably know what it feels like to be despised by someone because of our mistakes.

What we cry out for, in our nation, our church, our family, our own lives, is revival and restoration.  If once we have experienced the presence of God in our lives — if we have known the  shine  of his face — and it has faded for us, we earnestly yearn for it again.

We will find our revival and restoration in the life and the light of Christ, who brings not only salvation from our sins  but healing to our hearts, and the power to live the holy lives to which he calls us.

RESPOND: 

I find myself from time to time dealing with my own drift away from God.  I have to cry out again for renewal and revival.  As with the Psalmist this happens when I begin to call out God’s name and seek to live according to the claims of his name.

Our Lord, our nation experiences victories, but also sees defeats — the disabled veteran who wonders ‘was it worth it?’ The ambiguity of race relations in a divided country.  And our own personal struggles with grief or depression.  We don’t have the wisdom to provide all the answers.  But you have provided a Person who is wisdom incarnate, and salvation, and new life!  May we find our source of healing and salvation in Christ! Amen.

PHOTOS:
“Psalm 80-7” by tea4judy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Old Testament for December 22, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 7:10-16
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This is one of those passages that clearly has a double meaning prophetically.  On the one hand, there is the meaning for the time of Isaiah, who is prophet in the time of King Ahaz of Judah (reigned 736-716 B.C.). On the other hand,  Matthew’s Gospel interprets this oracle as a prophecy concerning the birth of Jesus.

Ahaz  ruled Judah in turbulent times.  Early in his reign,  Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the king of Israel forged a military alliance in order to invade Judah and divide it between them under a puppet ruler (Isaiah 7:1-6).  The Northern Kingdom shared common heritage and religion with Judah as part of the original 12 tribes of Israel, until Israel rebelled against Rehoboam’s harsh rule in 931 B.C (1 Kings 12).  From that time on there was intermittent strife between Israel and Judah.  Israel is also known variously as the Northern Kingdom, Ephraim, and Samaria.

However, Ahaz is assured by Isaiah that Syria and Israel will not be a threat to Judah — he predicts that in 65 years Israel itself  would be broken up (Isaiah 7:8-9). This is what did happen when Assyria invaded and conquered the Northern Kingdom in 721 B.C., and deported its inhabitants, scattering them throughout the Assyrian empire.

So, Isaiah’s question on behalf of Yahweh is significant:

Yahweh spoke again to Ahaz, saying,  “Ask a sign of Yahweh your God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.”

This is an invitation to seek even more blessing and success.  What Isaiah says to Ahaz in the verse prior to this is very revealing:

If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established (Isaiah 7:9).

This seems to be the problem for Ahaz—- he lacks faith.  He is too timid to ask anything of Yahweh, even though the prophet himself has offered on behalf of Yahweh:

But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, neither will I tempt Yahweh.”

Yahweh has lost patience with Ahaz’s timid faith, and promises a sign:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.   

The Hebrew word for virgin is almah, which many modern commentators point out means simply a young woman of childbearing age who has not yet had children.

As the oracle continues it does apply to the time of Ahaz:

For before the child knows to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings you abhor shall be forsaken.

In other words, the child will eat of the abundance of the land, and before he is old enough to have moral accountability, the kings of Syria and Ephraim will face disaster.

Obviously, the New Testament interpretation of this text takes us in a very different direction.  Let’s take that up in the Apply section.

APPLY:  

Again, we return to one of the dilemmas of Biblical interpretation.  There is a definite historical context for Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 7 — the threat of invasion that Ahaz’s kingdom of Judah faces from Syria and Israel.  The prophet is advising the king that his sign will be the birth of a male child who will be named Immanuel — and that before he is old enough to know right from wrong, the threat will be eliminated.

But Matthew’s Gospel makes it clear that there is a dual nature to this prophecy.  When Mary conceives prior to her marriage to Joseph, Joseph is alarmed.  But an angel appears to Joseph in a dream to reassure  him that he is to marry her, because the child has been conceived by the Holy Spirit of God (Matthew 1:18-21).  Matthew then quotes Isaiah’s prophecy as evidence of this miraculous conception:

Now all this has happened, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying,
 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child,
and shall give birth to a son.
They shall call his name Immanuel”;
which is, being interpreted, “God with us” (Matthew 1:22-23).

If there is any doubt that Mary is truly a virgin, Luke’s Gospel corroborates Matthew’s claim.  The Angel Gabriel appears to Mary and tells her that she will conceive and give birth to a son whom she will name Jesus.  But Mary is deeply troubled:

Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, seeing I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34).

In other words, Mary knows that this is an impossibility based on normal human biology.  She’s not naive.  But the angel assures her:

The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore also the holy one who is born from you will be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35).

There will be more to say about this in the Gospel reading for this week, from Matthew 1:18-25.  But for now, suffice it to say that at least two Gospel writers were convinced that Jesus was virgin-born, and this was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

This has also been the belief of the church for nearly 2000 years, and this faith is reflected in the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds.  The reason for this is very simple — Jesus fulfills this prophecy more completely than a child born in the 8th century B.C.  Only Jesus can truly be described as Immanuel — God with us. 

RESPOND: 

I recently had a conversation with a close friend who speculated about the Virgin Birth, and wondered how important it really is.  After all, he suggested, wouldn’t it be just as meaningful if Mary had conceived Jesus by the normal human process, and God lifted him up from his humble origins?  Isn’t that something that God often does in Scripture, he said — lift up the humble and the lowly?

I was pretty emphatic in my response.  The Virgin Birth points to a truth about the nature of Jesus.  That truth is not that Jesus was lifted up to God; instead, Jesus is God in the flesh who has humbled himself and come down to us from heaven!  My friend’s view, I said, is Arian — that God looked with favor on Jesus and adopted  him as his son.  But the view that Jesus is God who has become human is consistent with the Scriptures:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1, 14)

Christ Jesus,  who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:5-7).

This is why the Virgin Birth matters — other than the obvious fact that it is a doctrine of the church.  It reveals something about the nature of Jesus. Jesus isn’t a human being aspiring to be close to God.  Jesus is God who becomes a human being in order to lift us up to God.  He alone is Immanuel. 

Our Lord, we find it hard to wrap our minds around what you have done because it seldom matches our expectations and boundaries. You reveal yourself through a Virgin Birth, and you become like we are so that we can become like you because it is unique.  Thank you for humbling yourself so that we might be exalted with you by faith.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
“Immanuel: God with Us” by David Woo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.