Second Sunday After Christmas – Year C

Sermon Notes from the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People

RCL Readings –  Jeremiah 31:7-14, Psalm 84,  Ephesians 1:3-6,  15-19a,  Matthew 2:13-15,  19-23

ACNA Readings – Jerusalem 31:7-14, Psalm 84,  Ephesians 1:3-14,  Luke 2:22-40 or  Matthew 2:1-12

Seasonal Introduction.  Following the Christmas season, Christians around the world celebrate Epiphany. While the story of a Jewish baby born in his ancestral home may be interesting it would hardly be remarkable, let alone world-changing. But Christmas isn’t only about a human baby boy, it is about God coming to dwell among men as a man. During the season of Epiphany, we look at how God revealed Himself, starting with the pagan magi and ending with Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain. We also see that God calls ordinary, or extraordinary, people to reveal His message to the world as well.

Common Theme.  God calls people to serve Him. Yes, God is all powerful. God is holy. God has a host of angels to serve Him. But God desires that we too would become His messengers, disciples, and children. We are not worthy of this calling, but God is powerful enough to cleanse us and gracious enough to do so. Some answer that call.

Hebraic Context.  Worship of God is one of the cornerstones of the modern Church service—the praise service. Some of our most treasured hymns come from passages that reflect the worship of God in all places and all times. Today, the hymn presented in Isaiah, “Holy, holy, holy” is sung around the world as it has been for thousands of years. Worship of God is a cornerstone because it is clear that men, angels, and all of creation are expected to worship God. David knew this and assigned Levites to sing the praise of God in the Temple: morning, afternoon, and evening. We are following in this tradition (as we should). But it is possible that our understanding of worship, a moment of praise in a church service, is too narrow. Worship isn’t just praise and thanksgiving. 

Worship is the natural result of God’s epiphanic actions. We see many kinds of worship in the Scriptures: Obeisance and fear, praise and thanks, even lamentation leading to repentance. The Scriptures often show worship through instruments and song but the word that, perhaps, highlights the Hebraic idea of worship best is אבודה (avodah). 

Avodah is usually translated as work. Words like eved (אבד, servant) are derived from avodah. Can work be the greatest form of worship? Psalm 138 shows us that praise and thanksgiving are an important form of worship. But, during the season of Epiphany, God isn’t the only one displaying who He is—yes, God shows His glory to Isaiah; Jesus showed His power to Peter, James, and John (along with many other disciples) through miracles, healing, and teaching; He also showed His power through the resurrection—today we should note that God displayed who He is through the testimony of men He called. Epiphany leads to action which, in turn, continues to reveal God to the world.

Isaiah sees the glory of God and then responds to God’s desire for someone to share His revelation to Judah, “Here I am! Send me.” Jesus showed His power to Peter, James, and John and then told them that they would become fishers of men and so, “they left everything and followed Him.” Jesus appeared to Cephas, James, and Paul following His death and resurrection and so they preached to others what they received (and asked those to whom they preached to teach others). Yes, God is the LORD of hosts and could use an army of angels to display His power but He asks that sinful men join with Him in revealing the God of the universe to our neighbours.

Worship should not be easy, simple, or separate to our lives. Peter was martyred on a cross. James, the half-brother of Jesus, was killed below the Temple. Paul was beheaded. What is our spiritual worship but this, “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”

Isaiah 6:1-13. Isaiah was an incredibly important prophet in Judah as his ministry stretched across the reign of four kings of Judah before, tradition states, he was murdered in the reign of a fifth king. Isaiah begins with 5 chapters of God’s message of condemnation against Judah and Jerusalem before finally showing Isaiah’s calling. This prophetic condemnation, even with Isaiah serving under good kings, such as Uzziah and Hezekiah, doesn’t stand alone—it is accompanied by messianic expectation and great promises of comfort and salvation.

Isaiah had a vision experience in which he saw into the throne room of heaven and encountered the Lord. As we know from other passages of Scripture, no man has seen God. Tractate Yevamot 49.6-8, from the Babylonian Talmud, includes a tradition that is reinforced in the book of Hebrews. King Manasseh, a king renowned for his evil ways, confronted Isaiah by first quoting from Exodus 33:20, “Man shall not see Me and live” and then stating that Isaiah had declared that he “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.” How could these two statements coexist? And so King Manasseh had Isaiah executed by sawing him in two.

But what Isaiah actually describes is peripheral around the throne. Isaiah is able to describe the heavenly beings around God in some detail but not the Lord on the throne—on this he can only speak of the very hem of His robe. Before Isaiah is commissioned, John 12:41 states that he saw the glory of God. God revealed Himself in His majesty, where even the angelic hosts could only declare the holiness and glory of God throughout the whole earth. 

Scholars have debated the tri-fold use of the term “holy, holy, holy” with some of the early church fathers declaring that the angels declared that each member of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was holy. Ambrose, in On the Holy Spirit 3.16.110, said, 

“So everything which we esteem holy proclaims that Sole Holiness. Cherubim and Seraphim with unwearied voices praise Him and say: Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God of Sabaoth. They say it, not once, lest you should believe that there is but one; not twice, lest you should exclude the Spirit; they say not holies [in the plural], lest you should imagine that there is plurality, but they repeat thrice and say the same word, that even in a hymn you may understand the distinction of Persons in the Trinity, and the oneness of the Godhead and while they say this they proclaim God.”

Other scholars point towards the Hebraic tendency to use a word twice to create emphasis, for instance, when God calls out to His servants, “Abraham, Abraham”, “Moses, Moses”, and “Samuel, Samuel”. Doubling the word can also become expansive, “שנה, שנה” (every year) or “דר, דר” (each generation). To use a word thrice is the ultimate emphasis and expansion. The Aramaic translation expands precisely so on Isaiah 6:3 by stating that “God is holy in the highest heavens, holy upon the earth, and holy forever—world without end.” Given the greatness of God, surely it is reasonable to believe both are true.

Isaiah responds to his vision in a way that too many of us don’t. Knowing God’s majesty and glory, he declared his own uncleanness. But Isaiah isn’t only humbled in seeing the glory and majesty of God. God restores Isaiah. Isaiah sees his position of lowliness and sinfulness and proclaims his own ruin yet the Lord has mercy. This is when God called for Isaiah to become His messenger to proclaim a hard message to a difficult people.

And the message is difficult but there is hope. God is called the “LORD of hosts” and Isaiah speaks of the seraphim he saw around the throne of God, just a few of the myriad of hosts that do all that God bids them to do. But God sent Isaiah, a man of unclean lips whose guilt was taken away and whose sin was atoned for, to proclaim a message of warning. While so many do not listen to God, there are always those who do. Jesus warned those he taught, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear.” There are always some who will hear and God atones for sin.

Psalm 138.  Fear is the natural state of those who hear the voice of God. We see it throughout Scripture, Moses at the burning bush, the Israelites at Mount Sinai, the people hearing the word of God spoken in their midst such as with Ezra and Nehemiah or Josiah. In our other readings today Isaiah, Peter, and Paul all show a form of reverent fear when God appeared to them. But Psalm 138 reintroduces the idea that there would be rejoicing and thanksgiving as well.

Last week, after the word of God was read in the midst of the people by Ezra and the people were afraid, Nehemiah told them to rejoice. This idea of the holiness of God, as seen in Isaiah 6, connected with singing with joy and thanksgiving, as seen in Psalm 138, is written about in 2nd Temple literature and displayed through the lives of His servants. 

While God is exalted above all things He still calls down from heaven to man. In the season of Epiphany we remind ourselves that God continuously reveals Himself to us. But Psalm 138 also reminds us that we should call to God. We may go through times of trouble, enemies may surround us, but “on the day I called, You answered me”. God responds to us even as we know that we should respond to God when He calls. God’s presence in our life should cause us to have real gratitude. And as we worship God in thanksgiving, God is also mobilizing us according to His purpose. David starts by personally giving thanks to God but soon all the kings of the earth will join as the steadfast love and faithfulness of God is displayed.

I Corinthians 15:1-11. Jesus told Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have yet believed.” In Corinthians 15, many of Jesus' disciples (and some of His adversaries) saw Him after His resurrection, but the Corinthians had not. The question was, even with the evidence delivered by those who saw a risen Messiah, would the Corinthians “hold fast to the word” Paul preached to them? Evidently, some of the Corinthians did not. 

Hundreds of people saw the resurrected Lord. But it is interesting that Paul only named three, Cephas, James, and himself. All three had previously denied Jesus: Cephas repudiated Jesus during His trial; James, the half-brother of Jesus, seems to have denied that Jesus was the Messiah until the moment that Jesus appeared to him after the resurrection; and Paul directly persecuted Jesus by murdering those who were part of the body of the Messiah. This is the power of the resurrection—salvation and restoration. Without the resurrection (as Paul will declare in the remainder of his argument in I Corinthians 15:12-19) we remain in our sins and are truly to be pitied.

Luke 5:1-11.  Very quickly Jesus’ ministry expanded so that crowds would gather to hear Him teach. At this point Luke records Jesus gathering a select group of disciples to follow Him. Just as with Isaiah and, later, Paul, Jesus is going to act in power before calling men to follow and serve Him. But not everyone followed Him, those who were called were willing to act, usually in very real, practical, and physical ways.

Peter, who had first listened to John the Baptist before meeting Jesus, was familiar enough with Jesus and His teaching that he called Him “master” and allowed Jesus to use his equipment despite not yet following Jesus. While Peter, James, and John were likely tired and disappointed after their long, but fruitless, day of work, they were willing to put in a little more effort to assist this great teacher. They are still fishermen at this point but they stopped tending the nets from the night of work and went back out to serve this teacher from Nazareth.

The three men surely listened to Jesus' teaching but it wasn’t until afterwards, when Jesus told them to do one more thing for them and they obeyed, that they saw the power of God at work. One of the themes we see from Isaiah, Corinthians, and Luke is that God revealed Himself to sinful men and when He did, they responded. 

God has shown Himself to the world through His voice—through creation and the Torah. God has revealed Himself through miracles, redemptive actions, and His incarnation but that doesn’t mean that people understand or perceive what they hear and see. Through these passages we consistently see that God calls sinful men who are willing to admit their own shortcomings before their King. They see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and are healed. We understand sin to drive God away but so often in Scripture we also find that God draws near to sinners, even before they repent or turn to Him, in order that they can draw near to Him. But after they repent the relationship changes to something greater. Peter would not only be a fisher of men, He would also walk beside and talk to the creator of the universe while he followed Him.

Hebraic Perspective.  Paul reminded the Corinthians that although they hadn’t seen the resurrected Messiah, others had. Nonetheless, one of the great hopes of Christians around the world is that one day we will see God as He is. I have heard so many Christians refer to Jesus’ teaching on the servants entrusted with talents as they look to the day that they will enter heaven, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” What a glorious thing to hear as we finally see God for who He is. 

But what is the historical result when people see the glory of God? In Isaiah, we see the prophet declare, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts”. In Luke, Peter fell down before Jesus and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Fear in the presence of God seems to be the primary response. “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God”; both Gideon and Manoah were afraid they would die when the angel of the LORD came to them; Ezekiel, Daniel, and John the Revelator fell down on their faces when they had a vision of the King.

Much of this fear seems to simply be that God is great beyond measure. But there is also an element that we should recognize that we are sinful. Isaiah understood this, Peter understood it, and Paul and James were confronted with it when they encountered Jesus after His resurrection. After God spoke to Job his response was, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Directly after stating that some will hear “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Jesus spoke of the sheep and the goats. The King only invites the blessed to enter the kingdom, the humble servants who did not boast but quietly acted according to the will of their master. Those who thought only of themselves were cast into eternal punishment.

God doesn’t leave us in abject fear, hallelujah! But He is the one who lifts us up from having our face bowed to the ground. He is the one who takes away our guilt, our sin, and our shame. And He also rewards those who bow before Him and do His will. Let us bow down before Him. Let us confess our sins. And let us give praise and thanksgiving to God when He draws near to us and calls us to follow Him—as His servants, as His disciples, as His friends, and even as His children.

ACNA Readings

Judges 6:11-24.  Judges tells of a time when the people of Israel did whatever was right in their own eyes, something that Deuteronomy 12:8 strictly states they must not do, “You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes.” Yet, in the midst of this story Joash seems to have followed the command of God in Deuteronomy 6, “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand…’”

Joash’s son, however, had a problem with the answers he received from his father. His question has been repeated throughout history, “If the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His wonderful deeds?” Gideon’s question wasn’t answered through philosophy or apologetics, instead God commissioned Gideon and called him to act.

Gideon did act, following the pattern of Abraham, by offering hospitality to a messenger of God. When the angel consumed the food through a touch and through fire, Gideon realized that God’s messenger had been talking with him and had commissioned him to fight with Israel’s enemies. Gideon’s immediate response was fear. This, of course, is the natural response to encountering God. 

Unfortunately, the end of the story is very sad for Gideon. It turns out that Joash was not a follower of God nor had He taught His son that the LORD was with them—Joash had turned to Baal and Asherah. Having witnessed the wonderful deeds of the LORD, Gideon continued to act in fear. Nonetheless, the LORD continued to work in the midst of Israel through Gideon. God did not wait for the people to fully trust in Him or turn to Him, it was God that drew near to them. But He did not force them to draw near to Him—it wasn’t long before Gideon and Israel went back to trusting in foreign Gods who had neither done wondrous deeds for their fathers nor for them.

Psalm 85.  The specific history of Psalm 85 is unclear. It could have been written at almost any point in Israel’s history–for people sin and God speaks (sometimes with anger). But God’s people, the saints, also listen to God when He speaks while God will hear them and forgive. However, the close connection between the forgiveness of the people and restoration of the land may point towards this being a Psalm after the exile or, like Solomon’s prayer at the dedication (II Chronicles 26:24-42), prophetic regarding the possibility of a future exile.

In the Scriptures, Israel is both a people and a land and the two are inextricably linked. While the whole earth is the Lord’s, the opening line references Israel as “your land." Psalm 85:2 then paired the land of Israel with the people of Israel, to whom God had shown forgiveness. The exile was the painful, but promised, consequence of a spiritual falling away from God. Israel had embraced foreign gods and broken His covenant. The consequence, for there are always consequences for every action (sometimes good, sometimes bad), was Assyrian captivity and, later, Babylonian exile for Judah. 

This might have tempted the people of Israel to hopelessly abandon the Lord forever. But if not listening to God had caused the exile from the land, not listening to God after the exile would be folly. The psalm sends a message of hope that, for the people of God, salvation is near, and that the Lord will come and dwell in the land. 

From verse 8, the psalmist expressed the desire to submit to the Lord. He did this by hearing God speak. Repentance brings a renewed and restored relationship with God, this includes His presence. The Lord’s presence once more in the land would bring further blessings. Loving kindness and truth are paired with righteousness and peace, which poetically meet together with passion, described in the psalm as a kiss. Truth, sometimes translated as faithfulness, even springs from the earth as concurrently righteousness descends from heaven. The psalm concludes with an exhortation for preparation. In this case, it is righteousness that descends from heaven that prepares the way for the Lord. The exhortation to prepare comes from heaven. 

Endnotes

1.  Alternate RCL readings include: Sirach 24:1-12 and Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21. Alternate readings of Psalm 147 and John 1:1-18 were included in the RCL readings of the First Sunday after Christmas.
2. García Martínez, Florentino. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. Translated by Wilfred G. E. Watson, 2nd ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996. Pg. 215
3. Pesachim 54a
4. II Samuel 22 was also included as Psalm 18 in the prayerbook and hymnbook of the Jewish people—the Psalms.
5. Another phrase, very similar to “chief of the nations” is also used in Scripture, “First among the nations.” However, both times this phrase is used, it is in a very negative context: Numbers 24:20, “Amalek was the first among the nations, but its end is utter destruction” and Amos 6:1, “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountains of Samaria, the notable men of the first of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comes!”
6. The word, of course, can refer to the physical but it means more than just a physical return. Genesis 3:19 states, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This is a physical return, but it has a deeply spiritual facet that should not be divorced as physical or spiritual, but rather both physical and spiritual. In Judges 2:19, the term is used as the people repent from their brief time of obedience to God and return to other gods. One of the primary uses of the word שׁוּב֙ (shuv) was to return to the land, whether Abraham and Jacob as they returned to Canaan to those who were removed from the congregation due to sin—such as accidental manslaughter. However, in following the pattern set in Deuteronomy 4:29-30, the prophets continuously use the word to speak of returning to God: Joel 2:12; Hosea 12:6; Isaiah 55:6-7; Jeremiah 4:1; II Chronicles 7:13-14; Zechariah 1:3-4; even James 4:8 uses the same Greek word as translated in the Septuagint. Israel’s return to the land was also commonly kept in relationship with a return to God, as also spoken of in Deuteronomy.
7. Numbers 16:26-27
8. Dathan and Abiram are only mentioned in relation to their rebellion, whether in Numbers 16 and 26, Deuteronomy 11, or Psalm 106.
9. Psalm 84:10, “For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
10. Many suggest it is somewhere between Jericho and Jerusalem although others have speculated locations to the east, north east, and even west of Jerusalem.
11. RCL includes Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a while the ACNA includes Ephesians 1:3-14.
12. The RCL may divide Matthew 2 into Matthew 2:1-12, often the passage for Epiphany, and Matthew 2:13-23 and provide them as alternative readings.
13. Luke 1:41-45, 67-79, 2:25-32, 36-38
14. Luke 1:11-23, 26-38; Matthew 1:20-25; Luke 2:8-15
15. The most likely theories about the Magi was that they were either Medes or Chaldeans, both of whom resided in the Parthian empire. The original term for Magi seems to come from the Medo-Persian languages. Zoroastrianism, and Mithraism, was an extremely popular religion in the Parthian empire. Strabo mentions the Magus, or Magi, in Geography 15.3.13-16 as a priestly class of the Persians. Zoroastrianism was known for their sanctuaries of burning fire. Strabo states in Geography 15.3.16, “To whatever god they intend to sacrifice, they first address a prayer to fire.” Fire and light were a symbol of truth to fight darkness and evil. They also had a Messiah figure who they seemed to seek through the study of the movement of the bright stars. Interestingly, in scripture the Medes were the lone empire that God did not prescribe judgment against as they treated the Jewish people with kindness. From their midst came the only Gentile that God called a messiah, Cyrus—king of the Medo-Persian empire (Isaiah 45:1). They too may have been influenced by the Jewish writings, such as Daniel, even as their own beliefs sometimes influenced a form of gnostic dualism in a few communities within Judaism and Christianity. However, the Magi mentioned in Matthew 2 do not seem to know some of the common prophecies that the elders of the Jews would know. Alternatively, they may have been in the tradition of the Chaldeans, a people that were known to hear the voice of God. We first read about the Chaldeans with Terah and Abram, who heard the voice of God. Daniel also speaks of this special people who were summoned amongst magicians, astrologers, and sorcerers to explain dreams. But while Chaldeans were known to hear the voice of God, they were also a people who often fought against God (Job 1:17; II Kings 24-25; Jeremiah; Habakkuk 1:6). Nonetheless, these visitors from the East were the first non-Jews to bear witness to the King of the Jews and the redeemer of the world. This is another example of the Biblical pattern in which beginnings and endings often occur in the same way and using the same people. The people of Israel began with the call of Abram the Chaldean and concluded with exile back to the land they were called out from. However, from exile, they would once more be called to the land of Israel.
16. The death of King Herod gives us information on the time of Jesus’ birth as Herod died in 4 B.C. Scholarship generally gives a date for Jesus' birth sometime between 6-4 B.C.
17. Strabo, in Geography 16.3.7, specifically mentions frankincense as being a particularly valuable trade commodity from Persia. Although Strabo also mentions Egypt as a source of these goods while Diodorus mentions Arabia as a source for frankincense and myrrh in Bibliotheca Historica 3.46.
18. Isaiah 30:1-3, 31:1; Jeremiah 42:15-18; Deuteronomy 17:16, 28:68
19. Jeremiah 21:5
20. Ezekiel 18:20. That isn’t to say that consequences can’t be felt for sin through multiple generations as pointed out in Exodus 34:7 and Numbers 14:18.
21. Exodus 13:2, quoted in Luke 2:23).
22. In Israelite culture the presence of blood at childbirth meant that the woman and baby were now in an impure state. Impurity and uncleanness are not a state of sinfulness. To willfully remain in a state of impurity when the opportunity for purification was available, however, is sinful.
23. See Isaiah 61:1. Luke’s gospel account does not have the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh provided by the Magi as occurs in Matthew's account.
24. His age and occupation are not given in Luke’s account. Orthodox hagiography says Simeon was one of the seventy translators of the Septuagint Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures. The tradition says that, as he translated the Hebrew word ‘Alma’ into young virgin in the Greek, the Holy Spirit communicated to him that he would indeed meet this young virgin and the messiah that she bore. As the Septuagint is thought to have been translated in the 2nd Century BCE, this tradition seems highly unlikely.
25. Traditionally, only priests would pronounce a blessing from God over the people. That Simeon could take baby Jesus into his arms and say a blessing may be an indication that he was of the priestly class. However, this largely applied to specific blessings (such as the Aaronic blessing). All Israelites (and Gentiles) could, and were supposed to, bless God.
26. Anna may have been a prophetess for close to 60 years at this point.
27.  Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, wrote in his Antiquities of the Jews 11:133 that, "there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers". The Epistle of James opens by addressing the 12 tribes of Israel who are in the diaspora, suggesting that they were not actually ‘lost’, rather many of the tribes were indeed residing outside the land of Israel. Meanwhile, some had migrated south and remained in Israel as well as in the Kingdom of Judah.