First Sunday after Christmas, Cycle A
Within our Church Year schedule, already within a week after the birth of Jesus, our texts remind us that Jesus was born to suffer and to die. Our theology, if it is to be faithful to the texts, must be a theology of the cross, a theology of God in Christ suffering with us for our redemption.
Isaiah 63:7-9
Within this portion of the Isaiah traditions the rescue of the pre-Israelites from bondage and affliction in Israel by the Lord God is recalled. The Lord God is said to have carried the pre-Israelite people from danger just as a loving father carries his children to a place of safety. The Lord is described as the Savior of the household of Israel, afflicted when the Israelites were afflicted, suffering with them and redeeming them. For an excellent discussion of biblical expressions of God entering deeply into human experiences of suffering and of implications of this for our own pastoral care, preaching, and teaching, see Terence E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).
Hebrews 2:10-18
The concept of the suffering of the Lord continues and is amplified in this text. In this text Jesus as the Christ is depicted as having been sent by God to offer himself as the empathetic and faithful supreme priest representing all people in the presence of God, in order to make expiation as a priest for the sins of all of the people. Although Jesus had been tempted to avoid death by submitting to the claims of absolute authority of the Roman state, he instead experienced and overcame the power of death, destroying the power of the Romans who had the power of death, and setting free those who, in fear of death throughout their entire lives, had been subjected to bondage. God is said to have done this by making the Christ perfect through suffering, so that those who are tempted to submit to the claims of absolute authority of the Roman state may not yield to that temptation.
Matthew 2:13-23
The cruelty of Herod, representing the Roman state as one who had purchased the contract to rule for the Romans in Jerusalem and Judea, is portrayed in a most horrible form in this text. In his attempt to kill the infant Jesus, Herod is depicted as having ordered that all of the baby boys in the area of Bethlehem who were two years old or younger be slaughtered. The infant Jesus is spared because Joseph, warned in a dream by an angel, takes Mary and Jesus to Egypt, from which Jesus will be called to be God’s Son. Jesus and his family will suffer politically and economically throughout their lives, and Jesus himself will suffer and die on a Roman cross in Jerusalem.
Psalm 148
After the three texts considered above, Psalm 148 provides a song of praise. For all that God has done, does, and will do, all of God’s creation, in heaven above, on the earth, and the sun, the moon, and the flickering stars, people of all ages and genders are called upon in this psalm to give praise to the Lord God. In view of texts such as this in our Older Testament and of texts such as Galatians 3:26-28 in our Newer Testament, what justification do so many of us have in our time for causing additional suffering by continuing to restrict leadership positions in the Church to males and to those who have majority power positions and orientations?
