Tuesday December 20 Advent 4
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Psalm 66
God, everyone praises you because you have rescued us from disaster so I will delight in praising you.
Psalm 67
Because of God’s blessings to all the nations we will all sing God’s praises.
Isaiah 11: 10-16 What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah invents a whole new image, never previously imagined, that God will carry out the Red Sea rescue a second time. Like the ancient crossing of the Red Sea and finding paths in the wilderness, God will do the same to rescue the people from Assyria in Isaiah’s modern world. Are there ways in which we are called to be modern Isaiahs, anticipating a way in which Christ’s birth rescues humanity in our time?
Luke 1: 5-25 What’s Luke about?
We now begin Luke’s interpretation of Jesus’ birth. Elizabeth, a relative of Mary and married to a temple priest, has been barren and is getting elderly. Nevertheless, God intervenes and she conceives. We are reminded of the long tradition in Jewish scripture of miraculous conceptions—Sarai, Abraham’s wife, Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, Hannah, Samuel’s mother, among many others. John’s father, the priest, is struck dumb for doubting God’s power to bring the kingdom into their lives. Mary is also be part of this tradition—she cannot have a child because she does not have a man, yet God will initiate new life in spite of this impossibility.
Luke is challenging us to anticipate the arrival of God’s kingdom even when that would appear physically impossible.
This week’s collect:
Heavenly Father,
who chose the Virgin Mary, full of grace,
to be the mother of our Lord and Saviour,
now fill us with your grace,
that we in all things may embrace your will
and with her rejoice in your salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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