John 1:1-18
The gospel offering is John 1:1-18. Though John is not among the synoptic Gospels, it does occasionally receive some commentary in the Journey series. In fact, it was a subject of our blog entry of Monday, December 24, 2007, as Christmas selection III.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about John 1:1-18. The text is located at pages 208-212.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Galatians 3:23-35; 5:4-7
The First Sunday after Christmas features an important reading from one of the letters of Paul. The Letter to the Galatians contains his most powerful declaration about how freedom in Christ liberates the people of the way from what Paul by now considers to be the shackles of Judaic law. Paul focuses on faith working through love, rather than obedience to ritual requirements, as the center of one’s relationship with God.

Paul’s view about the relationship of the Christian believer to the Hebrew law was far from unanimous. Other early Christian leaders, including James the brother of Jesus, adhered to the notion that the law was still operative, and that gentile converts to even this Christian expression of Judaism were required to accept all the burdens of the law, including circumcision and dietary restrictions.

In fact, the experience of the early church coming to grips with a mission that embraced gentile converts was among the most important developments in first-century Christianity. It opened the richness of life in relationship to the God if Israel to those who were previously outside that fellowship.

Among the Gospels, Matthew is the one most focused on connections between Jewish tradition and the growing church. For that reason, we considered the text from Galatians in light of statements that Matthew’s Jesus makes about the law in the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon itself receives the lion’s share of our attention in Volume II of the Journey.

Click here to view what Volume II of the Journey has to say about Galatians 3:23-25 and 5:4-7. The text is located at pages 255-264.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume II in a PDF format.

Luke 2:15-21

The gospel for today is spread across two segments of commentary in the Journey series. The first portion contains Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus. Luke places the Holy Family in its long trek from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea, an eighty-mile stretch of often difficult and dangerous terrain. At the beginning of this passage, Joseph and Mary have found temporary shelter among the animals because there was no room in the inn.

Yet, the family is not alone. The birth of Jesus is heralded by angels. One would think that heavenly messengers making a monumental announcement would appear to the priestly classes, or to the highborn, wealthy, and powerful. Instead, the message is delivered to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. God’s ways are not the world’s ways.

It is tempting to view this pastoral scene as a biblical affirmation of God’s special affinity for the solid peasantry, the people of the land who work with crops and herds. But if we were to think this way, we would be wrong. Shepherds worked out in the elements. Their tasks often required them to be ceremonially unclean, as they had to protect the flocks from whatever risks arose, regardless of where that led them. Moreover, with easy “confusion” among flocks and animals, shepherds were often regarded as thieves. The result: in first-century Judaism, shepherds were virtual outcasts.

So it is to the ruffians—not the kings or the priests or even the solid, law-abiding peasant stock—that the announcement of the birth of the Savior is made. What might that mean for the way we think about conventional morality and piety?

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about Luke 2:5–20. The text is located at pages 111–115.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about Luke 2:21–24. The text is located at pages 130–133.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Romans 1:1-7 (BCP)

The BCP and RCL readings from the epistles diverge for the Feast of the Holy Name. Since we provided commentary on the BCP’s epistle in the Journey series, we will include that here as well.

The introductory material to Paul’s Letter to the Romans states that the ancestry of Jesus “according to the flesh” follows the Davidic line. It reports God’s declaration that Jesus is his son “according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.”

The concept of how Jesus stands in sonship toward God is easily glossed over, as if its meaning were readily apparent. In fact, it is not. We considered this idea in Volume I of the Journey when studying Luke’s version of the baptism of Jesus. That event served as a springboard to address the broader questions of what we mean when we say that Jesus is the Son of God.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about Romans 1:1–7. The text is located at pages 208–212.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in a PDF format.

This passage contains one of the many important scriptural lenses through which to view Jesus’ relationship with God as son to father. It offers a different perspective from what we typically see in the Synoptics.

Below is the link to the section from Volume I of the Journey which includes a discussion of John 1:1-14. The core Journey text is Luke 3:21-22, where the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in bodily form like a dove, and a heavenly voice proclaims him to be the Son, the beloved.

On Christmas day, we celebrate Jesus’ sonship to God. The heavenly voice proclaims that relationship in Luke. The prologue serves a similar function in John.

The linked text draws on these and other sources. They include Mark’s Gospel and Paul’s letter to the Romans. We offer all of this as food for your Christmas thoughts.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about John 1:1-14. The text is located at pages 208-212.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Christmas Day offers three selections for lectionary reading. Because the selections are the same each year, we depart for now from the specific Year B path tethered to the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, and immerse ourselves in Luke’s historical, literary, theological, and communal world.

Selections I and II, from both the RCL and the BCP lectionaries, have Luke 2:1–20 as their gospel readings. The two selections break the text out into standard and optional parts at different verses. Selection II divides the material into Luke 2:1–7 (standard) and Luke 2:8–20 (optional). This division compares closely to our own division in the Journey series.

Luke 2:1–20 is the heart of the Christmas story. The first seven verses speak of the universal census, requiring Mary and Joseph to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be enrolled. Our Journey commentary on this passage considers the historical circumstances around Jesus’ birth. What Luke tells us about it differs from what we know of the precise chronology of Roman rule and administration. It also differs from what Matthew tells us. Even so, Luke places the reader in a world where a Roman decree can impose hardship on struggling young people who find themselves on a long and difficult journey, with all the risks attendant to pregnancy and ancient travel assumed in order to comply with the imperial demand. At the end of the trip, our pair is met, not with welcome, but with disinterest and were shuffled aside to a place fit for animals. The experience of Mary and Joseph at Christmas prefigures the encounter between the mature Jesus and the Roman power structure at Holy Week.

Verses 8–20 describe how the birth of God’s anointed is announced by heavenly visitors. Ironically, it is proclaimed not to the high and mighty, but to the meek and lowly. As our Journey commentary describes, the shepherds of first-century Judea are not to be considered among the solid, salt of the earth peasantry. They exist at the fringe of society, considered unclean because of the requirements of their trade. At best, they were low-class workers. At worst, they were like petty criminals, often accused of grazing their sheep on other people’s land.

It is to these ruffians that the arrival of the Messiah is announced. They go to behold him on the occasion of his birth, and soon tell others about him. By their actions they become the first witnesses, and the first evangelists, of the Christ.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about Luke 2:1–20. The text is located at pages 105–115.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in a PDF format.

Isaiah 9:2–7

We also receive a little bonus from the Old Testament with the Christmas lectionary. Selection I—from both the RCL and the BCP—contains excerpts from Isaiah 9:2–7. The OT passage offers a familiar promise that Christians associate with the coming of Jesus. To us a child is born and a son is given, upon whose shoulders the government will rest (see Isa. 9:6).

We studied a few words from this passage in Volume II of the Journey as we explored how Matthew 4:12–17 considers the onset of Jesus’ ministry as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Isaiah promises that those dwelling in the Galilean lands of gentile darkness will see a great light. Matthew considers the prophecy fulfilled with the commencement of Jesus’ ministry. It begins in darkest Galilee—which, in truth, was an incredibly vital land by the time that Jesus walked; a place where cross-cultural currents carried forward, even to this day, the first words that Jesus preached.

Click here to view what Volume II of the Journey has to say about Isaiah 9:1–2. The text is located at pages 90–95.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume II in a PDF format.

Matthew 4:1–11

Our two lectionaries share the gospel reading. Matthew 4:1–11 provides the first gospel’s version of the testing of Jesus.

In the Journey, we initially explored Mark’s version of the testing. It is the shortest of the three texts. We used it to set the elements of the story, and then to shift toward the longer renderings.

Second, we turned to Luke’s version. There, we focused on the changing roles that the figure of Satan plays in the Bible—beginning with the simple role of an adversary opposing the players on the biblical stage, and concluding with Satan being God’s enemy.

Finally, in Matthew, we explored the three tests in detail. The tests Jesus undergoes are not merely fantastic stories of an otherworldly encounter; they also serve to echo the divine exchange between God and the children of Israel, as told in the story of the Exodus. But in Matthew, unlike the Old Testament, God’s servant fulfills the commands given, and prevails against the forces that would separate him and his people from the Father.

Our commentary on Matthew draws comparisons with Luke. In both versions, Jesus resists the temptation to be a strictly economic messiah, or a strictly religious one, or a strictly political one. This leaves us with the question: What kind of Messiah will he be?

Click here to view what Volume II of the Journey has to say about the testing of Jesus. The text is located at pages 61–76.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume II in PDF format.

Romans 5:12–19 (RCL); Romans 5:12–19 (20-21) (BCP)

While the readings from the Epistle for the First Sunday in Lent differ slightly between the RCL and BCP lectionaries, both versions find a home in Volume II of the Journey. There, we consider what it means for Jesus to become the second Adam, a new creation in whom the free gift of grace far exceeds the first Adam’s sin of trespass.

Click here to view what Volume II of the Journey has to say about Romans 5:12–21. The text is located at pages 36–37.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume II in PDF format.

Genesis 2:4b–9, 15–17, 25–3:7

The Old Testament reading for today brings us back to the creation of the world and the fall of man. The great OT myth—spiritually true, if not scientifically precise—tells how we begin in a state of grace, and then fall into our shared human condition so plagued with sin and suffering. Yet, we know from the other readings today that God makes provision for us. He restores us to a state of blessedness and becomes the source of our healing.

We touch on this great passage from Genesis in Volume I of the Journey.

Click here to view what Volume I has to say about the dust from which we are made, and to which we will return. The Genesis reference is found in the final question of the text, the whole of which is located at pages 198–200 of Volume I.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

John 1:29-42 (RCL); John 1:29-41 (BCP)

John’s Gospel introduces a different tradition around the baptism of Jesus than we see in other sources. Here, we do not focus on the event itself, but on John the Baptist’s reflections upon it.  He declares its meaning to his audience as he contrasts baptism by water with baptism by the Spirit. The passage offers illumination, rather than elaboration, on what John the Baptist, and perhaps John the Evangelist speaking through him, understands about the event. It heralds the coming of the Lamb of God, the descent of the Spirit like a dove, the revelation of the Son of God.

In the Journey, we examined John the evangelist’s baptismal story by focusing on its contrasts to the Synoptic tradition. We see that the baptism of Jesus is a historical event requiring a major interpretive effort by each of the four canonical evangelists. Each must come to grips with what that baptism means for his own time, place, and community. Therefore, we approach today’s gospel through our interpretation of Luke 3:21-22.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about John 1:29-34, a portion of today’s gospel reading. The text is located at pages 208-212.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Luke 2:15-21

The gospel for today is spread across two segments of commentary in the Journey series. The first portion contains Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus. Luke places the Holy Family in its long trek from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea, an eighty-mile stretch of often difficult and dangerous terrain. At the beginning of this passage, Joseph and Mary have found temporary shelter among the animals because there was no room in the inn.

Yet, the family is not alone. The birth of Jesus is heralded by angels. One would think that heavenly messengers making a monumental announcement would appear to the priestly classes, or to the highborn, wealthy, and powerful. Instead, the message is delivered to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. God’s ways are not the world’s ways.

It is tempting to view this pastoral scene as a biblical affirmation of God’s special affinity for the solid peasantry, the people of the land who work with crops and herds. But if we were to think this way, we would be wrong. Shepherds worked out in the elements. Their tasks often required them to be ceremonially unclean, as they had to protect the flocks from whatever risks arose, regardless of where that led them. Moreover, with easy “confusion” among flocks and animals, shepherds were often regarded as thieves. The result: in first-century Judaism, shepherds were virtual outcasts.

So it is to the ruffians—not the kings or the priests or even the solid, law-abiding peasant stock—that the announcement of the birth of the Savior is made. What might that mean for the way we think about conventional morality and piety?

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about Luke 2:5–20. The text is located at pages 111–115.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about Luke 2:21–24. The text is located at pages 130–133.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Romans 1:1-7 (BCP)

The BCP and RCL readings from the epistles diverge for the Feast of the Holy Name. Since we provided commentary on the BCP’s epistle in the Journey series, we will include that here as well.

The introductory material to Paul’s Letter to the Romans states that the ancestry of Jesus “according to the flesh” follows the Davidic line. It reports God’s declaration that Jesus is his son “according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.”

The concept of how Jesus stands in sonship toward God is easily glossed over, as if its meaning were readily apparent. In fact, it is not. We considered this idea in Volume I of the Journey when studying Luke’s version of the baptism of Jesus. That event served as a springboard to address the broader questions of what we mean when we say that Jesus is the Son of God.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about Romans 1:1–7. The text is located at pages 208–212.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in a PDF format.

John 1:1-18
The gospel offering is John 1:1-18. Though John is not among the synoptic Gospels, it does occasionally receive some commentary in the Journey series. In fact, it was a subject of our blog entry of Monday, December 24, 2007, as Christmas selection III.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about John 1:1-18. The text is located at pages 208-212.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Galatians 3:23-35; 5:4-7
The First Sunday after Christmas features an important reading from one of the letters of Paul. The Letter to the Galatians contains his most powerful declaration about how freedom in Christ liberates the people of the way from what Paul by now considers to be the shackles of Judaic law. Paul focuses on faith working through love, rather than obedience to ritual requirements, as the center of one’s relationship with God.

Paul’s view about the relationship of the Christian believer to the Hebrew law was far from unanimous. Other early Christian leaders, including James the brother of Jesus, adhered to the notion that the law was still operative, and that gentile converts to even this Christian expression of Judaism were required to accept all the burdens of the law, including circumcision and dietary restrictions.

In fact, the experience of the early church coming to grips with a mission that embraced gentile converts was among the most important developments in first-century Christianity. It opened the richness of life in relationship to the God if Israel to those who were previously outside that fellowship.

Among the Gospels, Matthew is the one most focused on connections between Jewish tradition and the growing church. For that reason, we considered the text from Galatians in light of statements that Matthew’s Jesus makes about the law in the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon itself receives the lion’s share of our attention in Volume II of the Journey.

Click here to view what Volume II of the Journey has to say about Galatians 3:23-25 and 5:4-7. The text is located at pages 255-264.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume II in a PDF format.

A Personal Note of Thanks
One final comment about the First Sunday After Christmas, 2007. That date also served as the occasion for the retirement of The Reverend Thomas D. Hughes from active parish ministry. Tom has served Trinity for a number of years as an Assistant to the Rector by preaching, celebrating, teaching, providing pastoral care, and doing whatever else needed to be done. We were always appreciative of getting better than full-time service from Tom for part-time pay! Trinity served as Tom’s last formal vocational call after a lifetime of wonderful ministry.

After the service, we sent Tom and Peg on their way to what we hope will be a fun-filled time of vacation, travel, and new adventures. Thanks be to God for how both the Hughes have touched our lives, and the lives of many others.

This passage contains one of the many important scriptural lenses through which to view Jesus’ relationship with God as son to father. It offers a different perspective from what we typically see in the Synoptics.

Below is the link to the section from Volume I of the Journey which includes a discussion of John 1:1-14. The core Journey text is Luke 3:21-22, where the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in bodily form like a dove, and a heavenly voice proclaims him to be the Son, the beloved.

On Christmas day, we celebrate Jesus’ sonship to God. The heavenly voice proclaims that relationship in Luke. The prologue serves a similar function in John.

The linked text draws on these and other sources. They include Mark’s Gospel and Paul’s letter to the Romans. We offer all of this as food for your Christmas thoughts.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about John 1:1-14. The text is located at pages 208-212.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in PDF format.

Christmas Day offers three selections for lectionary reading. Because the selections are the same each year, we depart for now from the specific Year A path tethered to the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, and immerse ourselves in Luke’s historical, literary, theological, and communal world.

Selections I and II, from both the RCL and the BCP lectionaries, have Luke 2:1–20 as their gospel readings. The two selections break the text out into standard and optional parts at different verses. Selection II divides the material into Luke 2:1–7 (standard) and Luke 2:8–20 (optional). This division compares closely to our own division in the Journey series.

Luke 2:1–20 is the heart of the Christmas story. The first seven verses speak of the universal census, requiring Mary and Joseph to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be enrolled. Our Journey commentary on this passage considers the historical circumstances around Jesus’ birth. What Luke tells us about it differs from what we know of the precise chronology of Roman rule and administration. It also differs from what Matthew tells us. Even so, Luke places the reader in a world where a Roman decree can impose hardship on struggling young people who find themselves on a long and difficult journey, with all the risks attendant to pregnancy and ancient travel assumed in order to comply with the imperial demand. At the end of the trip, our pair is met, not with welcome, but with disinterest and were shuffled aside to a place fit for animals. The experience of Mary and Joseph at Christmas prefigures the encounter between the mature Jesus and the Roman power structure at Holy Week.

Verses 8–20 describe how the birth of God’s anointed is announced by heavenly visitors. Ironically, it is proclaimed not to the high and mighty, but to the meek and lowly. As our Journey commentary describes, the shepherds of first-century Judea are not to be considered among the solid, salt of the earth peasantry. They exist at the fringe of society, considered unclean because of the requirements of their trade. At best, they were low-class workers. At worst, they were like petty criminals, often accused of grazing their sheep on other people’s land.

It is to these ruffians that the arrival of the Messiah is announced. They go to behold him on the occasion of his birth, and soon tell others about him. By their actions they become the first witnesses, and the first evangelists, of the Christ.

Click here to view what Volume I of the Journey has to say about Luke 2:1–20. The text is located at pages 105–115.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume I in a PDF format.

Isaiah 9:2–7

We also receive a little bonus from the Old Testament with the Christmas lectionary. Selection I—from both the RCL and the BCP—contains excerpts from Isaiah 9:2–7. The OT passage offers a familiar promise that Christians associate with the coming of Jesus. To us a child is born and a son is given, upon whose shoulders the government will rest (see Isa. 9:6).

We studied a few words from this passage in Volume II of the Journey as we explored how Matthew 4:12–17 considers the onset of Jesus’ ministry as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Isaiah promises that those dwelling in the Galilean lands of gentile darkness will see a great light. Matthew considers the prophecy fulfilled with the commencement of Jesus’ ministry. It begins in darkest Galilee—which, in truth, was an incredibly vital land by the time that Jesus walked; a place where cross-cultural currents carried forward, even to this day, the first words that Jesus preached.

Click here to view what Volume II of the Journey has to say about Isaiah 9:1–2. The text is located at pages 90–95.

Click here to download the actual page excerpts from Volume II in a PDF format.