Year B

Jan 24 2025

Scripture Study for

A significant aspect of the priestly role in ancient Israel, as today, was to ask for God’s blessing for individuals and the entire community. In this passage from Numbers, God gives the priests a specific prayer of blessing to call down divine favor on Israel. Divine blessing is an all-encompassing concept, with material and spiritual aspects. It involves protection, fecundity, well-being, personal and social harmony—in a word, shalom. The holistic nature of the blessing is captured in a number of ways. To keep means to guard and protect, while to “shine his face upon you” means to have a generally favorable disposition. Graciousness implies the divine generosity, as does the notion of divine kindness.

In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul emphasizes both the divine and human origins of Christ, both of which bring blessing on those incorporated into Christ through baptism. Born of a woman, Jesus is fully human, sharing in our human condition and subject himself to the law. At the same time, as God’s Son, he has the power to save, which the law cannot do. This salvation is effected by making Christians the children of God by adoption, a legal and familial metaphor that means that they are heirs, along with Christ, to all of God’s promises. This selection features the work of (what would eventually be understood as) the Trinity: God the Father, who through the Spirit, brings Christians into “sonship” along with Christ.

The shepherds have been informed by the angels that the child born in Bethlehem, although poor and unknown, is in fact the Savior (Luke 2:8–15). Finding the child in a manger, they announce what they have heard to Mary and Joseph. While the onlookers are amazed that such a child could possibly be “Messiah and Lord,” Mary is unsurprised, and subsequently reflects on “these things.” The shepherds, among the first believers in this gospel, now go back out into the world to glorify and praise God for what has been done in Jesus.

Jan 24 2025

The Ancient Promise Is Fulfilled

Look at me. The skin on my hands is so thin that I can see my veins and my bones. My feet shuffle so slowly that everyone rushes past me in the street. The ache in my back never stops. Isn’t it enough already, you who have been our hope for ages past? Long ago, you said that you would not take me to you until I had seen your Messiah. I felt then that it was a wonderful promise. But extreme old age is a burden heavy to bear. All that I love is gone. I have waited so long.

What’s that? This is the day? Go to the temple?

Look at her. Her cheeks are fresh, gleaming with joy, as she holds that boy. She is young. Yet a sword will pierce her heart. The babe is light in her arms. She doesn’t know how heavy it will be to hold a lifeless child. The man stands behind her, a holy family. She doesn’t know the hole left in your heart when your spouse dies. O Lord, I have seen too much. The heaviness of earth weighs me down.

What’s that, you say? This is the One? The child?

Look at him. His tiny head nestles in the crook of my arm. His eyes briefly open. His eyelids flicker as he looks into my eyes. This, this is the one who will set your people free? Joy rises within me. We your people have waited so long. This baby so small will be our hope for years to come? My ribcage swells in jubilation. My aches are gone. I feel like dancing!

Now, Master, please, set me free. Let me come to you in peace. You have fulfilled your promise! Bless you, bless you, my God!

Consider/Discuss

God works miracles through the very old. Abraham and Sarah, Simeon and Anna—they were faithful for so many years. The Lord’s promises to them were fulfilled. How have you seen the beauty of God through eyes of those who have lived long?
God works miracles through the very young. The Holy Family is a sign of promise for years to come. How have you seen the beauty of God through the lives of those who are very young?

Living and Praying with the Word

God of the heavens, you asked Abram to count the stars, to trust you for descendants. You asked Simeon to trust that the Savior of the world would come. You ask us to trust that you do fulfill your promises. You came to us within a human family. So this day, we entrust our families and all those we love to you to hold and keep safe. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for us!

Jan 24 2025

Scripture Study for

The story of Israel commences with an elderly, childless couple to whom God promises countless descendants. The Lectionary reading begins with the initial promise to Abram, made in response to his complaint that all of the blessings he had received will pass to his servant—an unsubtle critique that the promise of descendants has not been fulfilled. In an intervening passage (Genesis 17) God makes this already improbable promise even more unlikely by insisting that ninety-year-old Sarah will be the mother of those countless descendants. The increasingly implausible promise of descendants, however, is finally fulfilled, setting the biblical precedent that God has the power and the will to bring life where it does not seem possible.

In his Letter to the Hebrews the author here focuses on the faith of Abraham, who trusted in God’s promises (Genesis 12:1–7). When God told Abraham to leave his family and go “to a land that I will show you,” he went. Abraham also believed that God would produce an heir through Sarah—and so it happened. The most difficult act of faith came when God, without explanation, commanded Abraham to sacrifice that very same heir (Genesis 22). Although the Genesis account reveals nothing of Abraham’s thoughts about this command, the author of Hebrews draws on the tradition that Abraham trusted God to raise up his sacrificed son, a symbol of the resurrection of God’s own sacrificed Son.

The central theme of the Gospel reading is fulfillment. The Holy Family fulfills the law, obeying it by circumcising Jesus (2:21) and now presenting him to God. According to Exodus 13:11–16, the firstborn male was to be set aside exclusively for God. Usually, the child was redeemed, “bought back,” for five shekels. Jesus is not redeemed, however, because he will remain consecrated to God. The purification of the mother, who became ritually unclean during childbirth for seven days, lasted for thirty-three days after that; then she could once again enter the temple. Jesus himself fulfills God’s promises to Israel. Both Simeon and Anna represent pious Jews who trusted in these promises. They thus represent also those who would recognize and favorably receive Jesus as the Christ.

Jan 24 2025

Jesus, the Light of the World

In the time of Isaiah, messengers carried their proclamations from one post to another on foot. The messenger in this passage brings “glad tidings,” which will be rendered a couple of centuries later in the Greek translation of Isaiah as euangelion. The “good news” is that the Exile has come to an end and the sovereign God who defeats all enemies intends to bring salvation and restore the people. The watchmen in Jerusalem see not only the messenger but also the salvation itself, very likely a reference to returning Israelites heading toward the city. Such is the power and goodness of Israel’s God that all nations will see and admire it.

The Letter to the Hebrews focuses on the unique accomplishment of Jesus Christ. Because he is not only God’s Son and heir, but especially “the very imprint of his being,” Jesus has revealed God more clearly and fully than had the earlier prophets. Whereas in the past God had provided for the broken human condition by legislating repeated purification from sin, now God has provided a fuller and final purification through a great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14–5:10; 7:1–8:6). Finally, as God’s Son and heir, Jesus reigns with God in heaven. As God’s equal, he is therefore also worthy of the worship of all creation.

The beginning of John’s Gospel emphasizes two themes. The first has to do with the person of Jesus as the “true light . . . coming into the world.” As he comes into the world, Jesus, as God’s Word, brings with him the very presence of God: life and light, grace and truth. In other words, as God coming to dwell among us, Jesus brings every good thing that God has to offer the human race, and to creation as a whole. The second theme is the rejection by the world of its very source and life. When the Word comes into the world, the world the Word created, it either cannot or will not recognize him, or at least some in the world have not recognized him. These two themes of presence and rejection will develop throughout the Gospel.

Jan 24 2025