Tuesday December 31 Christmas 1
Click here for simplified daily office prayers
Psalm 46
Neither storms of water or storms of war will shake me because I know that God is behind all the world. Like a river flowing through the city, God is always in our midst. The refrain, “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.” expresses this confidence over and over.
Psalm 48
A song of praise for how Jerusalem has been blessed by God— the forces which would destroy us are overcome.
We might understand this psalm as rejoicing in the beauty of creation, and of our own self as a glorious city, made possible by God’s commitment to justice.
Isaiah 62: 10-12 What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah imagines proclaiming to the city of Jerusalem that her people are returning on a glorious highway from their distant exile.
We now leave Isaiah temporarily for a few days of readings from key Hebrew Bible passages describing God’s rescue of the people. Next week we will resume reading from Isaiah, and will encounter Isaiah’s radically new idea that God works through all human history regardless of whether God is known or not.
John 8: 12-19 What’s John about?
Jesus claims to be the light of the world, but is accused of being untrustworthy because he has nobody to support his claim. Jesus responds that he is not the only one making this claim—God backs him up, and those who do not see light in him will also be unable to experience God. Experiencing Jesus as light depends on us already longing for the light—we already have to be deeply longing for what is good and just and loving. Without that, Jesus doesn’t make any sense, and we won’t have any experience of God.
These are a series of highly symbolic conversations in which John is describing the various ways in which Jesus’ meaning is received or rejected.
The question posed to us from this passage is whether our discipleship of Jesus arises because he fulfills the expectations of our society (in this passage because Jesus is from Bethlehem), or whether it is the new life we receive, through being included in his death and resurrection, that draws us to him (in this passage the anomaly that Jesus lived nowhere near Jerusalem and the centre of their faith).
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you have shed upon us the new light
of your incarnate Word.
May this light, enkindled in our hearts,
shine forth in our lives;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Click here to share your thoughts on the web site.