God Fulfills His Promises
Commentary
From the promises of the Old Testament prophets (today’s selection is from Jeremiah) to the fulfillment of God’s will in the early Church, we can see that God has always wanted us to know that we are loved. It has been the intention of God to overcome the separation between us, since it seemed evident to God that we ourselves could not bring ourselves to rely on him. By doing so, God allowed us to begin to live in love and grace and peace, rather than the chaos that threatens to engulf us.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
This scripture ought to be more real for us today than it was to the people of Judea to whom it was written. This was a prediction of the future hope for the Jews; as their country was being destroyed by the expanding nation of Babylon, Jeremiah was sent to tell them that God was still their God, and that they were still not just his people but his children. He promised them consolation and safety, joy to the point of dancing (for those young enough to dance), and joy for the old. How could they begin to believe this in the face of violence?
The news in the Middle East today is like it was for the people of Jeremiah’s time. We can scarcely take in the fear and struggle of those who have been streaming out of war-torn Syria. They have been threatened with torture, had their homes confiscated and given to ISIL terrorists. Homeless, lacking the bare necessities, injured in the street-to-street war in their own country, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children are overwhelming our ability to provide for them -- at a time when we are fearful of terrorists among the refugees themselves.
Many of us want to seal off our country, hunker down, and kill anyone who resembles the terrorists in any way. This is understandable, even though it goes against the value God places on each person in this world, especially immigrants. (See, for example, Genesis 12:10; Exodus 22:21; Leviticus 19:34; Leviticus 25:23; Numbers 15:25-27; Deuteronomy 14:29; Deuteronomy 24:14.) But images of the face of one man holding his dead child in his arms with the rest of his family lost at sea, or of one child whose parents both died along the way, ground us in the reality of their suffering. Like the Jews arriving in Babylon, these refugees are trusting their future to God in a land where they cannot understand the language and their familiar, comforting foods are unavailable. Crowded into relief centers, they wait for the background check that will determine if they can stay or be deported to the chaos they are fleeing. We can see the fear and isolation in their eyes when we see them close up.
Muslim or Christian (Christians are especially targeted by ISIL), these immigrants could stand for the people to whom Jeremiah was speaking. Like the immigrants today, the Jews were uprooted by war. The Babylonian empire had been growing for centuries, taking over entire nations as they went. In the northwest, they had waged war against the Assyrians -- and conquered them. Then they headed south and west, with an eye to conquering Egypt, which was at a low point in their history. Sadly, due to their location alongside the “Upper Sea” (we call it the Mediterranean, after the custom of Rome), Judea was once again taken over by those they saw as their heathen enemies. All of their upper class was forced to leave their native homes and walk to the capital city, a distance of 800 miles or more due to the route they took. Those who were spared that walk remained in Israel, ruled over by Babylonian officers.
It was common for the prophets of Israel to write in poetic verses, and Jeremiah is no exception. This makes some people think that this degrades the words of the prophets. But not all of these verses are metaphorical. For example, verse 11 says: “For the Lord has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.” Just as a kidnapper may demand a ransom -- that is to say, a payment -- for the safe return of the targeted family’s loved one, Jeremiah says that God will redeem Israel from their “kidnappers,” the Babylonians.
There was a news report on 20/20 the week before Christmas 2015 about a couple here in the United States who organized an effort to rescue a group of Iraqi and Syrian Christians being targeted by ISIL and deliver them to a country where they would be safe. When they came out of the vehicles that carried them to their new home, the women began to ululate, which is a loud joyous sound. Once settled, the men got out the musical instruments they had managed to carry with them, and the young women got out their most beautiful gowns and veils and began to dance. Exactly as Jeremiah had foretold to his people, they made merry and rejoiced at their deliverance. God’s promises are still being carried out, in the worst situations as well as those that please us.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Although this book is called Ephesians, there is no internal evidence that it was aimed at a specific church. It is considered by scholars to have been a “circular” letter -- that is, a letter that made its way around the Gentile churches that were being established in Asia Minor. Paul had spent three years living in Ephesus, according to the book of Acts, and had a great fondness for the people there; this letter lacks that note of love that we see, for example, in Philippians. The name of “Ephesians” was probably added later, in order to identify it among the many letters that made their way around the churches.
Since 1792, the authorship of the letter has been called into question. There is no doubt that the attitudes expressed in the letter are Pauline, but most scholars today agree that the letter dates to a time beyond which Paul survived. This does not degrade the trust we can put into this letter; in fact it can elevate our faith, knowing that these ideas of Paul’s survived him. What he had taught was still being taught, and brought joy and faith to people who had never seen Jesus or experienced his teachings firsthand.
The main thrust of today’s passage is to impress upon us Gentiles what a gift we have received in being chosen by God to stand alongside the Jews as the chosen people of God. We are inheritors of the grace that God promised to the ancient Hebrews. We are redeemed by Christ, and “been made a heritage” -- that is, we inherit our salvation through Christ (the Jewish messiah). All of this is part of God’s plan for the creation, which is that all things that are now chaotic (including our own lives) can be remade to be harmonious, as God intended from the beginning. The language that is used in the original Greek is the legal language the Romans used when adopting a son, so it indicates a binding contract between us and God.
This adoption means that we can inherit all of the promises God made to the Jews -- to live in peace and hope, blameless and holy in God’s sight. What a relief it is to hear someone say, “You are forgiven. Go in peace.” Even better is to be invited in, to live in the presence of God as if we had always been there.
We have not had to travel far in order to obtain this gift. Unlike those who have had to flee their homes in order to live in safety, we can have this peace right here at home. Unlike those who have been born to this inheritance, we ought to have more joy, because it has not always been evident to us that we are children of God. Some of us can barely believe that we are precious to God. Yet this is the message of this passage.
How do we know that this is true? Paul says that the early Christians “were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit” -- that is, they saw the works of the Holy Spirit: speaking in tongues, the gifts of prophecy and healing both spiritually and physically, and the ability to live according to God’s will instead of only our own. Today we don’t speak in tongues in most of our churches, and we seldom lay hands on people and heal them, and we have learned that many of those who claim to do so are cheating -- “planting” people in the congregation who will claim healing. But we can witness to the work of the Holy Spirit among us even so, citing our own healing, our ability to overcome our own weaknesses by our belief in Jesus Christ.
John 1:1-18
John’s gospel does not begin with the birth of Jesus, but with a hymn in praise of Logos, the Word. This is a mystical approach to Christianity, and not like the other three gospels, which attempt to tell us about the life of Jesus and the things he did to attract attention so that he might draw whoever heard him closer to God. In John’s gospel, the claim is made immediately that the Word was part of God from the very beginning of the Creation. That Word is said to be life and light and part of the creative process of God.
And yet that mystical Being, that Word that was of the very substance of God. (The Greek uses a grammatical form that doesn’t exactly say that the Word was God, but was of the same type as God; just as a baby reflects the genetics of its parents, and as dogs don’t give birth to kittens, the Word was divine -- not easily translated into English.) That Word was the instrument by which God created. (See Genesis 1, where God says “LIGHT” and there was light, and all the rest of creation comes into being in the same way.)
Our gospel lesson suggests that we can skip these first nine verses, but this opening of the gospel is a poetic masterpiece and suffers if we cut it up. Verses 6-9 seem to be an intrusion, but it is really an aside, an indication that there was a witness sent by God, just as Isaiah had foretold, to point to the arrival of God’s own Anointed One, this Word that was divine, yet deigned to be enclosed in flesh. This is the meaning, of course, of the Incarnation; in Latin, the word for flesh is carne. So incarnation means literally “put into flesh.”
After that aside, which in itself is in verse and so a part of the ongoing poetry, John returns to his hymn extolling the Christ. This Word, by which God brought our world into being, was unknown to humans, even his own people (by which John means the Jews). Undaunted, the Word gave power to anyone who would receive his teachings. They became children of God, not born in the human way, but born by the will of God. The result of his coming and living among us has been that we have been blessed to be freed from mere laws and given the grace to live in love. Rather than a series of “thou shalt nots,” we have permission to love one another, to treat others as we want to be treated, and to receive the same from others.
Now, that is revolutionary!
Jeremiah 31:7-14
This scripture ought to be more real for us today than it was to the people of Judea to whom it was written. This was a prediction of the future hope for the Jews; as their country was being destroyed by the expanding nation of Babylon, Jeremiah was sent to tell them that God was still their God, and that they were still not just his people but his children. He promised them consolation and safety, joy to the point of dancing (for those young enough to dance), and joy for the old. How could they begin to believe this in the face of violence?
The news in the Middle East today is like it was for the people of Jeremiah’s time. We can scarcely take in the fear and struggle of those who have been streaming out of war-torn Syria. They have been threatened with torture, had their homes confiscated and given to ISIL terrorists. Homeless, lacking the bare necessities, injured in the street-to-street war in their own country, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children are overwhelming our ability to provide for them -- at a time when we are fearful of terrorists among the refugees themselves.
Many of us want to seal off our country, hunker down, and kill anyone who resembles the terrorists in any way. This is understandable, even though it goes against the value God places on each person in this world, especially immigrants. (See, for example, Genesis 12:10; Exodus 22:21; Leviticus 19:34; Leviticus 25:23; Numbers 15:25-27; Deuteronomy 14:29; Deuteronomy 24:14.) But images of the face of one man holding his dead child in his arms with the rest of his family lost at sea, or of one child whose parents both died along the way, ground us in the reality of their suffering. Like the Jews arriving in Babylon, these refugees are trusting their future to God in a land where they cannot understand the language and their familiar, comforting foods are unavailable. Crowded into relief centers, they wait for the background check that will determine if they can stay or be deported to the chaos they are fleeing. We can see the fear and isolation in their eyes when we see them close up.
Muslim or Christian (Christians are especially targeted by ISIL), these immigrants could stand for the people to whom Jeremiah was speaking. Like the immigrants today, the Jews were uprooted by war. The Babylonian empire had been growing for centuries, taking over entire nations as they went. In the northwest, they had waged war against the Assyrians -- and conquered them. Then they headed south and west, with an eye to conquering Egypt, which was at a low point in their history. Sadly, due to their location alongside the “Upper Sea” (we call it the Mediterranean, after the custom of Rome), Judea was once again taken over by those they saw as their heathen enemies. All of their upper class was forced to leave their native homes and walk to the capital city, a distance of 800 miles or more due to the route they took. Those who were spared that walk remained in Israel, ruled over by Babylonian officers.
It was common for the prophets of Israel to write in poetic verses, and Jeremiah is no exception. This makes some people think that this degrades the words of the prophets. But not all of these verses are metaphorical. For example, verse 11 says: “For the Lord has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.” Just as a kidnapper may demand a ransom -- that is to say, a payment -- for the safe return of the targeted family’s loved one, Jeremiah says that God will redeem Israel from their “kidnappers,” the Babylonians.
There was a news report on 20/20 the week before Christmas 2015 about a couple here in the United States who organized an effort to rescue a group of Iraqi and Syrian Christians being targeted by ISIL and deliver them to a country where they would be safe. When they came out of the vehicles that carried them to their new home, the women began to ululate, which is a loud joyous sound. Once settled, the men got out the musical instruments they had managed to carry with them, and the young women got out their most beautiful gowns and veils and began to dance. Exactly as Jeremiah had foretold to his people, they made merry and rejoiced at their deliverance. God’s promises are still being carried out, in the worst situations as well as those that please us.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Although this book is called Ephesians, there is no internal evidence that it was aimed at a specific church. It is considered by scholars to have been a “circular” letter -- that is, a letter that made its way around the Gentile churches that were being established in Asia Minor. Paul had spent three years living in Ephesus, according to the book of Acts, and had a great fondness for the people there; this letter lacks that note of love that we see, for example, in Philippians. The name of “Ephesians” was probably added later, in order to identify it among the many letters that made their way around the churches.
Since 1792, the authorship of the letter has been called into question. There is no doubt that the attitudes expressed in the letter are Pauline, but most scholars today agree that the letter dates to a time beyond which Paul survived. This does not degrade the trust we can put into this letter; in fact it can elevate our faith, knowing that these ideas of Paul’s survived him. What he had taught was still being taught, and brought joy and faith to people who had never seen Jesus or experienced his teachings firsthand.
The main thrust of today’s passage is to impress upon us Gentiles what a gift we have received in being chosen by God to stand alongside the Jews as the chosen people of God. We are inheritors of the grace that God promised to the ancient Hebrews. We are redeemed by Christ, and “been made a heritage” -- that is, we inherit our salvation through Christ (the Jewish messiah). All of this is part of God’s plan for the creation, which is that all things that are now chaotic (including our own lives) can be remade to be harmonious, as God intended from the beginning. The language that is used in the original Greek is the legal language the Romans used when adopting a son, so it indicates a binding contract between us and God.
This adoption means that we can inherit all of the promises God made to the Jews -- to live in peace and hope, blameless and holy in God’s sight. What a relief it is to hear someone say, “You are forgiven. Go in peace.” Even better is to be invited in, to live in the presence of God as if we had always been there.
We have not had to travel far in order to obtain this gift. Unlike those who have had to flee their homes in order to live in safety, we can have this peace right here at home. Unlike those who have been born to this inheritance, we ought to have more joy, because it has not always been evident to us that we are children of God. Some of us can barely believe that we are precious to God. Yet this is the message of this passage.
How do we know that this is true? Paul says that the early Christians “were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit” -- that is, they saw the works of the Holy Spirit: speaking in tongues, the gifts of prophecy and healing both spiritually and physically, and the ability to live according to God’s will instead of only our own. Today we don’t speak in tongues in most of our churches, and we seldom lay hands on people and heal them, and we have learned that many of those who claim to do so are cheating -- “planting” people in the congregation who will claim healing. But we can witness to the work of the Holy Spirit among us even so, citing our own healing, our ability to overcome our own weaknesses by our belief in Jesus Christ.
John 1:1-18
John’s gospel does not begin with the birth of Jesus, but with a hymn in praise of Logos, the Word. This is a mystical approach to Christianity, and not like the other three gospels, which attempt to tell us about the life of Jesus and the things he did to attract attention so that he might draw whoever heard him closer to God. In John’s gospel, the claim is made immediately that the Word was part of God from the very beginning of the Creation. That Word is said to be life and light and part of the creative process of God.
And yet that mystical Being, that Word that was of the very substance of God. (The Greek uses a grammatical form that doesn’t exactly say that the Word was God, but was of the same type as God; just as a baby reflects the genetics of its parents, and as dogs don’t give birth to kittens, the Word was divine -- not easily translated into English.) That Word was the instrument by which God created. (See Genesis 1, where God says “LIGHT” and there was light, and all the rest of creation comes into being in the same way.)
Our gospel lesson suggests that we can skip these first nine verses, but this opening of the gospel is a poetic masterpiece and suffers if we cut it up. Verses 6-9 seem to be an intrusion, but it is really an aside, an indication that there was a witness sent by God, just as Isaiah had foretold, to point to the arrival of God’s own Anointed One, this Word that was divine, yet deigned to be enclosed in flesh. This is the meaning, of course, of the Incarnation; in Latin, the word for flesh is carne. So incarnation means literally “put into flesh.”
After that aside, which in itself is in verse and so a part of the ongoing poetry, John returns to his hymn extolling the Christ. This Word, by which God brought our world into being, was unknown to humans, even his own people (by which John means the Jews). Undaunted, the Word gave power to anyone who would receive his teachings. They became children of God, not born in the human way, but born by the will of God. The result of his coming and living among us has been that we have been blessed to be freed from mere laws and given the grace to live in love. Rather than a series of “thou shalt nots,” we have permission to love one another, to treat others as we want to be treated, and to receive the same from others.
Now, that is revolutionary!
