Monday December 16 Advent 3
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Psalm 41
Just as we care for the poor and needy, so God cares for us. I am needy in that I have sinned and my enemies and even my friends are all conspiring against me and hoping that I will die. All I can do is trust that God will protect me.
When we, or our world, seem to have little hope, we ground ourselves in knowing God holds us fast.
Psalm 52
Cruel powerful people seem to run the world, but we trust that God will enable the world to be as fertile as a green olive tree and evil will be ended.
Isaiah 8: 16-9: 1 What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah is determined to trust only in the God of Israel, the God of justice. The people may trust in magic and divination, but that leads only to ignorance and darkness. But we wait for God to transform the land and make it glorious again.
Luke 22: 39-53 What’s Luke about?
Jesus is abandoned even by his disciples who cannot stay awake with him in Gethsemane. Jesus heals the wound a disciple inflicts on a servant of those coming to kill him. The darkness seems to engulf Jesus as he is arrested.
This seems at first a strange series of passages to read as we approach Christmas, but the point of Jesus’ life is that through him God gives up everything for us. His birth, in Luke’s gospel, happens amidst the looming oppression of the Roman empire, and something similar happens in in Matthew’s gospel with Herod’s murder of hundreds of baby boys in an attempt to kill Jesus. Jesus’ whole point is to give himself for us and so it makes sense to read about that total self-offering by God which begins in Jesus’ birth.
This week’s collect:
God of power and mercy,
you call us once again
to celebrate the coming of your Son.
Remove those things which hinder love of you,
that when he comes,
he may find us waiting in awe and wonder
for him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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