SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 2025 | CHRISTMAS - Second Sunday After Christmas (ABC)

Notes

Jeremiah: God is good and merciful

Ephesians:

13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

Revised Common Lectionary (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2009).

John:

17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Revised Common Lectionary (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2009).

Good morning,

Looks like you made it to 2025, congrats! So you get to enjoy all the ads and articles about health and fitness, how this is the year you can achieve your goals and/or full potential, or perhaps the opposite: you are warned that this year is going to be hard and these are the ways you can prepare for it...

Of course, None of it is entirely true or false - there are things that we can do to better our health, the beginning of this year is full of promise and also doubts and warnings. But none of it determines who we are and what we stand for. As we are reminded by today’s texts that is rooted in our faith in Jesus first and foremost.

Good examples of new beginnings out in the world are currently smothered out by all the bad “same olds" - Russian bombings in Ukraine, acts of violence and destruction in New Orleans, New York, Las Vegas, Montenegro.. It goes to show that even in 2025, there will be plenty of examples of how much the world is broken and in need of reconciliation.

Today's reading comes from Gospel of John that was likely written between 90 and 110 of Common Era. So probably at least 60 years after the conclusion of Jesus' earthly ministry. Written in different times and also a different place - likely over 1000 miles away from Jerusalem in Ephesus, present day Turkey, then Asia Minor. They had to adapt and contextualize the gospel for the Hellenistic people, most of which has not met Jesus or the apostles (except perhaps for Paul) and lived their lives far away from the happenings of the gospels, most of which would not be even alive then! The way it is written is quite different from the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) - much more philosophical, refined, and with some unique content.

One of the changes that have proponents of inerrant Word of God and those that seek to completely harmonize the gospels head scratching is the notion that Jesus is the Lamb of God, the centerpiece of Passover and thus his sacrifice does not happen after the Passover meal (the events of the Last Supper) where a lamb is eaten but rather Jesus' crucifixition happens during Passover dinner to underscore that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb that has been living among the people and whose blood will be spilled. We accept this variation as faithful and Spirit-filled, but the truth is that it is different from what the other gospels say. We make it work.

And I think that is important for our understanding of faith - with holy things, we have to think beyond right and wrong, ancient and new, orthodox or heretical. We are called to profess an ancient faith as presented to us in the creeds, but with each completed church and calendar year, we are called upon to keep contextualizing and reforming our beliefs. Whilst God is unchanging, a constant, we continue to change and so does the world around us. To somehow try and retain an unchanging faith is impossible and I would also think a waste of both energy and time.

God’s love towards us is unchanging and yet it can compel us to do different acts of mercy as those that are loved - generosity, telling truth to power, sharing our time, protecting the vulnerable, listening to others - in other words, paying the love forward, becoming but a transfer station for God’s love on its way to others. Let 2025 be another year for God’s love and mercy to be inbreaking into the world. Amen.