Written as the Year changes from 2024 to 2024! Who’d have thought it? Maybe THIS year, Christ will come for everyone, everyone at all. While we wait and bask in the light of the Star, we hear these messages sent about the universality of the ChristChild.
SIRACH/ECCLESIASTICUS 24:1-12 talks about the Eternal Wisdom of the Creator, perhaps the breath of God, enveloping the World. But this free-floating Wisdom needs a headquarters, a constant address–so naturally, the Jews picked Jerusalem. Wisdom offers us a chance to get near to God, not just through salvation by-‘n’-by, but by showing us how to live wholly throughout life. “Wisdom springs from God and is the foundation of a life lived as God created it to be.” (Stephen G. Lytch, in FEASTING on the WORD, C 1:175)
The EPHESIANS reading, 1:3-14, is a tied-on compendium of catch-phrases and other gnostic pieces of wisdom. BUT as Wm. Barclay points out, “holy” means “DIFFERENT”! The Christians of Ephesus are enjoined to be DIFFERENT from social culture around them, not necessarily to get to Heaven, but to live life as God intended. This intimates that the New Order is already among us, unfolding daily, our only hope in the face of oligarchs and non-seeing politicos then and now! (Praise God for Bernie Sanders!) Who will stand with me in Being Different?
The Gospel is that of JOHN 1:9-18. Read it often, allowing each word and phrase to resonate into the perceived hopelessness of the day. Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that “the Word [I like to use “promise” or “presence”] was not God’s creation but the true Light of God.” (op.cit., 193) She invites us to put skin on the glory: our Divine Connection is more than an occasional affirmation of Doing Good, but becomes a way of living which reflects the ongoing love and daily involvement of a Living Creator…
William Barclay, again, in his commentary on Ephesians: “All over the world, God had been preparing individuals and nations so that their minds would be ready to receive the message of Christianity when it came.” (page 99) It’s oblique. It’s different. It’s also Good News for a weary world.
In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King
Tell your friends! Join us every Tuesday for a provoking moment of hearing scriptural readings assigned by the Common Lectionary for the upcoming weekend…at horacebrownking.com
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