Timing is everything
Commentary
Our culture has a propensity to celebrate one occasion and then to move on quickly. That is especially true of Christmas. Just think of what happens the day after Christmas. From even before Thanksgiving, the department stores have been playing Christmas music, hoping to get customers in the mood to begin their holiday shopping. But on the day after Christmas, all signs of the holiday disappear. The decorations come down. The music is changed. Christmas cards are on sale at half-price. Most important of all for some, stores go into the sales mode in hope of reducing their stock before inventory.
The church seems strangely out of sync with culture. While Christmas carols fill the shopping mall, the church is singing Advent hymns. While the Christmas decorations are being taken down on the day after Christmas, the church is still in the midst of its celebration. Some find it a bit hard to understand the church's celebrating Christmas after December 25 has passed. The Sundays after Christmas are, then, something of a cultural anomaly.
What the church year suggests, however, is that the grand celebrations of the tradition, such as Christmas and Easter, are too precious and too rich to be confined to a single day. We need the Sundays after Christmas to understand and absorb what happened in the manger in Bethlehem. Interestingly enough, the three lessons for this First Sunday after Christmas in Year B all have to do with timing. The church-culture difference in times of celebration may be a good context in which to explore the matter of timing in these lessons.
Most of us know personally the old saying, "Timing is everything." We know there are occasions when the timing is perfect. We know there are other occasions when the time is not yet right. After a period of waiting for just the right time, the ripe time is the moment to act. Farmers know about timing. When the crops are ready, the farmer drops everything and gets on with the harvest. To do otherwise is to miss the opportunity and endanger the crop.
Like the farmer, many of us have had to wait for a particular time and, when that time finally came, act without hesitation. Timing is everything! That slogan provides us a context in which to explore these three lessons.
Isaiah 61:10--62:3
This passage is the continuation of the first reading for the Third Sunday in Advent (61:1-4, 8-11), so you might want to review what is said about that lesson. The whole of chapter 61 has to do with the time of redemption for Israel. In verses 8-9 God speaks of the divine justice and the promise that Israel will become known among the peoples. In verses 10-11 Israel answers the divine voice. YHWH is praised for having saved the people and clothed them in garments of salvation. Confidence in God's promise inspires verse 11. As certain as the advent of spring is, so certain is the fact that God will bring forth righteousness in Israel.
The tone shifts somewhat in 62:1. Here the speaker declares that he will not be silent until Israel is vindicated. We are probably safe in assuming that the singular voice in these verses is the whole nation of Israel. The people will keep reminding God of the divine promise to prosper their nation and broadcast Jerusalem's faith. This anonymous speaker is confident that day will come. Eventually the nations shall see Jerusalem in all its glory and realize that the people's faith in YHWH was not in vain. When that day comes, when the timing is right, God will give Jerusalem a new name to denote its new status. Just as characters in the Hebrew Scriptures are given new names after pivotal experiences in their lives, so Jerusalem will be given a new name on the day of its glorification.
We may be a bit nervous about the idea that God needs to be reminded of the promises made to Israel. It makes God look a bit like an absent-minded elder who needs someone to serve as a divine appointment book. Still, there is in these final verses also a profound blending of hope and prayer. This continuous plea that God remember Israel is part of the Hebraic understanding of our relationship with God. It is above all an honest relationship in which we are free to encourage God to do what has been promised, as well as complain about God's unhurried manner. The speaker has no doubt that the time of Jerusalem's vindication is coming, but he will not simply wait for it. Instead, he serves as God's memory. He will not let the divine promises slip away. The time is not yet ripe for God to bring the fulfillment of those promises. The speaker seems to understand that. However, anticipation keeps him on the threshold of the heavenly courts.
The careful reader may notice the rather strange combination of the tenses of the verbs in this passage. The passage begins with the speaker referring to what God has already done. God "has clothed me with the garments of salvation" and "has covered me with the robe of righteousness" (v. 10). Then in verse 11 the verbs are in the future tense: "God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations." The verses of chapter 62 included in the reading keep the attention riveted on the future and what God will do then. "The nations shall see your vindication ..." (v. 2).
What's going on here? If God has already clothed Israel in a suit of salvation, why the hope for a future springing up of righteousness or vindication? Read on the first Sunday of Christmas, the passage invites us to look at both the importance of the event of Jesus' birth and the promise it holds for the future. We can't wallow contentedly in the nostalgia of the past. Because what God did in that past event twists us around in the other direction to look for what God has yet to do. The coming of the right time requires patience and trust, but in this case it also requires keeping God faithful to the promises of old.
Galatians 4:4-7
Paul, too, is interested in God's timing. He seems to think that God's pokey manner is really an expression of the fact that timing is everything. In the final verses of chapter 3, the apostle speaks of the difference between the time before faith and the time of faith and of how the law served as our tutor until Christ came. More important, Paul says that now that faith has come we are all children of God. At the beginning of chapter 4, he explores the metaphors of child and heir. The child may be the heir of the parents' wealth, but even the heir is under the supervision of others and is little better off than a slave. The heir has only promise. Something crucial happened then with the coming of Christ.
God is a master of timing. At just the right time, God acted in a decisive way in Christ. Note what Paul says about Christ in verses 4 and 5: "He was born of a woman and born under the law. He was born to redeem those under the law that we might be adopted as children of God." Paul summarizes the whole of the Christian gospel in terms of Christ's being the means by which God could form a divine family with adopted children. His primary point is that because of the birth of Christ, we receive a kind of birth -- a new status as God's sons and daughters.
For Paul that theological truth has an experiential expression. This is not simply some heady idea. God has implanted the divine Spirit in us. That Spirit makes us cry out to God as our Father. It is Christ's own Spirit, Paul argues, that empowers us to claim God as our Parent. With that assertion, Paul summarizes and concludes his argument in the last verse of the reading. We are not slaves living within God's family but children. And if we are God's children, we are then heirs of what God has promised us.
Timing is everything, so far as Paul is concerned. The difference between the pre-Christ age and the period after Christ is absolute. It's a whole new ballgame now that Christ has come. But Paul seems to think that this decisive event could not have occurred just any time. It was in what Paul christens the "fullness of time." In God's design for the redemption of creation, timing is everything. Notice, too, that Paul has that same odd association of the past, present, and future that we found in the first lesson. We are children of God, Paul claims. However, that parentage means that we are also heirs. Heirs are promised something in the future. What we are shapes then how we look at the future. Our task, Paul seems to say, is to recognize that the decisive time has come and we are in a new age. However, our task too is to appropriate the new future that comes with our adoption as God's children.
Luke 2:22-40
The second lessons begins, "When the fullness of time had come." The Gospel lesson picks up the refrain and begins, "When the time came...." This is another of Luke's stories of Jesus' childhood and another of the several times in Luke Jesus comes (or is brought) to Jerusalem. In this case, the occasion is the dedication of the new child. Leviticus 12 dictates the practice of the purification of the new mother and child and the circumcision of male children. Jesus' parents were good religious folks, and they obediently fulfill what is demanded of them. However, Luke is up to something more here. The purification trip provides the evangelist with a framework in which to present two additional characters and their witness to the meaning of Christ's birth. The framework is found in verses 22-24 and completed with 39-40. What goes on in the verses within that frame is what is most important.
Enter two prophets, each of whom makes his or her pronouncement and then promptly disappears. The second, old Anna, is explicitly called a prophet, perhaps so that we cannot minimize her role just because she is a woman. The first, Simeon, is never called a prophet but surely speaks like one. Above all, the Hebrew prophets were interpreters of history. They observed what was going on in current events and then received inspiration to interpret those events in terms of divine action in the world. Simeon and Anna are both inspired interpreters of the meaning of the appearance of this infant, Jesus.
Simeon is a good guy who has been eagerly anticipating God's final and decisive revelation. Now the Holy Spirit lets him in on the divine plan for Jesus. He then makes two pronouncements. The first provides the church with its Nunc Dimittis. The song is Simeon's declaration that he is now ready to die -- now that he has seen evidence that God is about to complete the plan of salvation (vv. 29-32). His second pronouncement is directed to Mary (vv. 34-35). It is a kind of blessing but more a prediction. This little child is going to upset the whole structure of society and in doing so lay out what is really within the people. This radical restructuring will affect Mary in a personal way, since she is going to experience a great deal of pain because of this child.
In the hands of Luke, Anna represents the continued role of women in this pivotal time. She is in the tradition of Elizabeth and Mary. However, she is also the evangelist's way of including the elderly as beneficiaries of Jesus' ministry. At 84, she has seen it all -- all except this moment. She lets others in on what she and Simeon know, namely, that this little infant is more than meets the eye. He is God's "redemption of Israel." With these two characters, Luke demonstrates that the Holy Spirit is alive and well and shaping the course of things. If we thought that the days of the Spirit and the prophets were gone (see Zechariah 13:2-6), we need to think again. The Spirit and prophecy have been revived to occasion this decisive time.
Timing is everything, and this lesson seems to emphasize that fact. Just look at how often expressions of time are used, both in the narrative present (i.e., the now of the time in the story) and in reference to the future. The importance of the present is underlined with references to the now in verses 22, 29, 36-37 (Anna's age), and 38a ("at that moment"). The present is important in this story, of course, because it signals what's coming in the future, in particular, God's crucial act of saving humanity. So, this passage is dotted with references to this future: Simeon's anticipation of "the consolation of Israel" (v. 25); the salvation God has prepared for the people (v. 31); the anticipation of Jesus' toppling of the social structure (v. 34); and "looking for the redemption of Jerusalem" (v. 38b). The dynamics of this passage are propelled by time. More exactly, the passage's animation comes from the delicate relationship between the importance of this very moment and the future foreshadowed in the present.
Timing is everything, and Christmas is about timing. It is also about the dynamic relationship between the present and the future. Christmas celebrates the enormity of the birth of Christ -- what that means in the whole economy of God's plan. However, this singular event at Bethlehem steers us into the future. The timing of the birth of Jesus entails what God will eventually do with this event. In part the Nativity of our Lord fixes our attention on the past and especially that one Holy night. That is important. Yet this is only one dimension of the timing of Christmas. The other is the implicit promise given us in Christ's birth. The promise is the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem -- our consolation and our redemption. Or, as Paul would put it, the promise is that, as children of God, we are heirs of what God has in store for us in the future. Oddly enough, weeks ago Advent turned our attention to the future in anticipation of Christ's birth. Now we have reached that time. Christ is born, and we celebrate that event. However, again, our eyes are turned toward the future. It is a future shaped by the birth of the Bethlehem baby. Advent and Christmas combine forces to help us straddle the past and the future while standing in the present.
Our Christian lives are always planted in the present but stretched both backward and forward in time. In this clumsy position, we are more likely to lose our balance and tumble over. Then we forget how important timing is. Yet in such an awkward posture, stretched between times, it is easier to remember that timing is everything. It was for God's plan. It is for us. Is this the time to set out on what for us is a new venture? Might this be the fullness of time when we should speak honestly with a friend about something that has been bothering us? Is this the time we should finally admit that we can make it on our own? For what might this present time be the fullness of time for you?
Timing is everything, so we are well advised to use this Christmastime as a period of appropriation and anticipation. Indeed, the church needs the time of Sundays of Christmas to absorb it all. Unlike our cultural celebration, we cannot take it all in on one day and then move on. We need to tarry here and ponder what we celebrate and its meaning for our lives. Timing is everything, and this is not the time to rush on.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 61:10--62:3
This text continues with the passage that we read from Isaiah 61 on the Third Sunday in Advent. The preacher should therefore refer to the exposition for that Sunday in this issue of Emphasis. There the historical context and meaning of the text are explicated.
As is sometimes the case with the lectionary, it has begun with the ending of one pericope and joined it to the beginning of another. Verses 10 and 11 in chapter 61 form the ending of that chapter's long poem. Verses 1-3 in chapter 62 are the beginning of the poem that continues through 62:9. However, the two portions have some content in common, and we can treat them together.
In 61:10-11, the Judean community breaks forth into praise, exulting that it has been clothed with God's salvation, like a bride or groom clothed with their wedding garments. Israel is often pictured in the Old Testament as the bride of God (cf. Hosea chs. 1-3 and Jeremiah 2:1-3), just as the church and the new Jerusalem are portrayed by that metaphor in the New Testament (Mark 2:19-20 and parallels; John 3:29; Revelation 21:2). And the thought here is that the Lord will so cover the Judean community with salvation that it will be as if that is the clothing that the Judeans wear. They will be wrapped in God's salvation, covered, garbed with it.
As a result, in verse 11, the community expresses its faith in God's fidelity to his promises. The people confess that as surely as the earth brings forth vegetation, so surely will the Lord God (the title used also in 61:1) cause his saving righteousness and praise to spring up before the eyes of all the nations as a witness to them. Judah will be saved, and all peoples with her. Therefore she rejoices.
That has not yet taken place in the lives of the Judeans who are the object of these promises, however. Indeed, if we examine the living conditions of the Judeans who returned to Palestine from Babylonian exile, their lives seem anything but saved. They are still subjects of the Persian Empire, and they make up not a nation, but a struggling little congregation of priests and laity and leaders. Often they know poverty and inflation and hunger. They manage to rebuild their temple, but it is a pitiful little edifice compared to the temple that once was (cf. Haggai 2:3). They are constantly harrassed by opponents when they reconstruct Jerusalem's walls (cf. Nehemiah 4). The glorious promises made to them by the earlier Second Isaiah and here, Third Isaiah, have not come to pass. And this announcement of salvation in our text must have been received with a good deal of skepticism by those who heard it. All nations will see Judah's salvation? Hardly!
For that reason, in 62:1-3, the reformed prophets reassure the struggling Judeans that intercession before God will be made for them. One of the frequent functions of a prophet in the Old Testament is to intercede before God for his people (cf. Deuteronomy 9:25-29; Jeremiah 7:16; Amos 7:1-6), and in Isaiah 62:1, the prophet reassures the people that he will never cease praying for them. He will pound on God's door in prayer, as it were, until her vindication (that is, her forgiveness) "goes forth as brightness" and her salvation (her fullness of life) "as a burning torch" -- as light to be seen by all peoples everywhere (cf. 60:1-3). Then all nations will be drawn to Judah's light and will acknowledge that the Lord is their God also. In short, Judah here is promised that she will become the beginning center of the Kingdom of God on earth. God will delight in her and give her a new name and treasure her like a precious jewel in his hands.
Did that beckoning light ever dawn, and did the Kingdom of God ever begin on earth? Not in Old Testament times. That is the strange thing about the Old Testament prophecies -- they often end up in the air, unfinished and unfulfilled. And whenever we read the Old Testament, we always have to ask: "Did God keep these glowing promises?"
The Word of God never fails, good Christians, and in the fullness of time, God kept his promises. He gathered them all up and incarnated them in Jesus Christ, born at Bethlehem, and brought them to fulfillment. For in our Lord Jesus, God did indeed begin his kingdom. Do you remember the words of our Lord as he began his preaching? "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). And in Luke, "If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:20). There is the beginning of God's universal reign over all the earth, there in that man from Nazareth -- in that one clothed in the pure righteousness of his Father, bringing God's promises of comfort and freedom and joy to all people.
There too, in Jesus Christ, is the light that will draw all nations to himself -- the "light of the world" (John 8:12; 9:5), "the true light that enlightens everyone" (John 1:9), the light that "shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).
Do we realize, then, that if we trust in Jesus Christ and if we let him live in us (cf. Galatians 2:20), we participate in his righteousness and in his life-giving light? Certainly we have no righteousness and light of our own, do we? We are too much soiled with our selfishness and sin that cast a shadow over any light we possess in ourselves. But in Jesus Christ, by trust in him and his victory over sin and death, we are counted righteousness and light in the eyes of our God, and we become also "the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14), saved, vindicated, forgiven, treasured, as Judah was promised she would be.
Then, says our text, all nations will be drawn to the salvation of God that he makes evident in our lives, and all peoples too will confess that our Lord is their Lord and our God is their God. Thus, God will spread the salvation of his kingdom over all his earth. And the praise that we hear in our text will be the praise of all men and women everywhere: "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness."
The church seems strangely out of sync with culture. While Christmas carols fill the shopping mall, the church is singing Advent hymns. While the Christmas decorations are being taken down on the day after Christmas, the church is still in the midst of its celebration. Some find it a bit hard to understand the church's celebrating Christmas after December 25 has passed. The Sundays after Christmas are, then, something of a cultural anomaly.
What the church year suggests, however, is that the grand celebrations of the tradition, such as Christmas and Easter, are too precious and too rich to be confined to a single day. We need the Sundays after Christmas to understand and absorb what happened in the manger in Bethlehem. Interestingly enough, the three lessons for this First Sunday after Christmas in Year B all have to do with timing. The church-culture difference in times of celebration may be a good context in which to explore the matter of timing in these lessons.
Most of us know personally the old saying, "Timing is everything." We know there are occasions when the timing is perfect. We know there are other occasions when the time is not yet right. After a period of waiting for just the right time, the ripe time is the moment to act. Farmers know about timing. When the crops are ready, the farmer drops everything and gets on with the harvest. To do otherwise is to miss the opportunity and endanger the crop.
Like the farmer, many of us have had to wait for a particular time and, when that time finally came, act without hesitation. Timing is everything! That slogan provides us a context in which to explore these three lessons.
Isaiah 61:10--62:3
This passage is the continuation of the first reading for the Third Sunday in Advent (61:1-4, 8-11), so you might want to review what is said about that lesson. The whole of chapter 61 has to do with the time of redemption for Israel. In verses 8-9 God speaks of the divine justice and the promise that Israel will become known among the peoples. In verses 10-11 Israel answers the divine voice. YHWH is praised for having saved the people and clothed them in garments of salvation. Confidence in God's promise inspires verse 11. As certain as the advent of spring is, so certain is the fact that God will bring forth righteousness in Israel.
The tone shifts somewhat in 62:1. Here the speaker declares that he will not be silent until Israel is vindicated. We are probably safe in assuming that the singular voice in these verses is the whole nation of Israel. The people will keep reminding God of the divine promise to prosper their nation and broadcast Jerusalem's faith. This anonymous speaker is confident that day will come. Eventually the nations shall see Jerusalem in all its glory and realize that the people's faith in YHWH was not in vain. When that day comes, when the timing is right, God will give Jerusalem a new name to denote its new status. Just as characters in the Hebrew Scriptures are given new names after pivotal experiences in their lives, so Jerusalem will be given a new name on the day of its glorification.
We may be a bit nervous about the idea that God needs to be reminded of the promises made to Israel. It makes God look a bit like an absent-minded elder who needs someone to serve as a divine appointment book. Still, there is in these final verses also a profound blending of hope and prayer. This continuous plea that God remember Israel is part of the Hebraic understanding of our relationship with God. It is above all an honest relationship in which we are free to encourage God to do what has been promised, as well as complain about God's unhurried manner. The speaker has no doubt that the time of Jerusalem's vindication is coming, but he will not simply wait for it. Instead, he serves as God's memory. He will not let the divine promises slip away. The time is not yet ripe for God to bring the fulfillment of those promises. The speaker seems to understand that. However, anticipation keeps him on the threshold of the heavenly courts.
The careful reader may notice the rather strange combination of the tenses of the verbs in this passage. The passage begins with the speaker referring to what God has already done. God "has clothed me with the garments of salvation" and "has covered me with the robe of righteousness" (v. 10). Then in verse 11 the verbs are in the future tense: "God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations." The verses of chapter 62 included in the reading keep the attention riveted on the future and what God will do then. "The nations shall see your vindication ..." (v. 2).
What's going on here? If God has already clothed Israel in a suit of salvation, why the hope for a future springing up of righteousness or vindication? Read on the first Sunday of Christmas, the passage invites us to look at both the importance of the event of Jesus' birth and the promise it holds for the future. We can't wallow contentedly in the nostalgia of the past. Because what God did in that past event twists us around in the other direction to look for what God has yet to do. The coming of the right time requires patience and trust, but in this case it also requires keeping God faithful to the promises of old.
Galatians 4:4-7
Paul, too, is interested in God's timing. He seems to think that God's pokey manner is really an expression of the fact that timing is everything. In the final verses of chapter 3, the apostle speaks of the difference between the time before faith and the time of faith and of how the law served as our tutor until Christ came. More important, Paul says that now that faith has come we are all children of God. At the beginning of chapter 4, he explores the metaphors of child and heir. The child may be the heir of the parents' wealth, but even the heir is under the supervision of others and is little better off than a slave. The heir has only promise. Something crucial happened then with the coming of Christ.
God is a master of timing. At just the right time, God acted in a decisive way in Christ. Note what Paul says about Christ in verses 4 and 5: "He was born of a woman and born under the law. He was born to redeem those under the law that we might be adopted as children of God." Paul summarizes the whole of the Christian gospel in terms of Christ's being the means by which God could form a divine family with adopted children. His primary point is that because of the birth of Christ, we receive a kind of birth -- a new status as God's sons and daughters.
For Paul that theological truth has an experiential expression. This is not simply some heady idea. God has implanted the divine Spirit in us. That Spirit makes us cry out to God as our Father. It is Christ's own Spirit, Paul argues, that empowers us to claim God as our Parent. With that assertion, Paul summarizes and concludes his argument in the last verse of the reading. We are not slaves living within God's family but children. And if we are God's children, we are then heirs of what God has promised us.
Timing is everything, so far as Paul is concerned. The difference between the pre-Christ age and the period after Christ is absolute. It's a whole new ballgame now that Christ has come. But Paul seems to think that this decisive event could not have occurred just any time. It was in what Paul christens the "fullness of time." In God's design for the redemption of creation, timing is everything. Notice, too, that Paul has that same odd association of the past, present, and future that we found in the first lesson. We are children of God, Paul claims. However, that parentage means that we are also heirs. Heirs are promised something in the future. What we are shapes then how we look at the future. Our task, Paul seems to say, is to recognize that the decisive time has come and we are in a new age. However, our task too is to appropriate the new future that comes with our adoption as God's children.
Luke 2:22-40
The second lessons begins, "When the fullness of time had come." The Gospel lesson picks up the refrain and begins, "When the time came...." This is another of Luke's stories of Jesus' childhood and another of the several times in Luke Jesus comes (or is brought) to Jerusalem. In this case, the occasion is the dedication of the new child. Leviticus 12 dictates the practice of the purification of the new mother and child and the circumcision of male children. Jesus' parents were good religious folks, and they obediently fulfill what is demanded of them. However, Luke is up to something more here. The purification trip provides the evangelist with a framework in which to present two additional characters and their witness to the meaning of Christ's birth. The framework is found in verses 22-24 and completed with 39-40. What goes on in the verses within that frame is what is most important.
Enter two prophets, each of whom makes his or her pronouncement and then promptly disappears. The second, old Anna, is explicitly called a prophet, perhaps so that we cannot minimize her role just because she is a woman. The first, Simeon, is never called a prophet but surely speaks like one. Above all, the Hebrew prophets were interpreters of history. They observed what was going on in current events and then received inspiration to interpret those events in terms of divine action in the world. Simeon and Anna are both inspired interpreters of the meaning of the appearance of this infant, Jesus.
Simeon is a good guy who has been eagerly anticipating God's final and decisive revelation. Now the Holy Spirit lets him in on the divine plan for Jesus. He then makes two pronouncements. The first provides the church with its Nunc Dimittis. The song is Simeon's declaration that he is now ready to die -- now that he has seen evidence that God is about to complete the plan of salvation (vv. 29-32). His second pronouncement is directed to Mary (vv. 34-35). It is a kind of blessing but more a prediction. This little child is going to upset the whole structure of society and in doing so lay out what is really within the people. This radical restructuring will affect Mary in a personal way, since she is going to experience a great deal of pain because of this child.
In the hands of Luke, Anna represents the continued role of women in this pivotal time. She is in the tradition of Elizabeth and Mary. However, she is also the evangelist's way of including the elderly as beneficiaries of Jesus' ministry. At 84, she has seen it all -- all except this moment. She lets others in on what she and Simeon know, namely, that this little infant is more than meets the eye. He is God's "redemption of Israel." With these two characters, Luke demonstrates that the Holy Spirit is alive and well and shaping the course of things. If we thought that the days of the Spirit and the prophets were gone (see Zechariah 13:2-6), we need to think again. The Spirit and prophecy have been revived to occasion this decisive time.
Timing is everything, and this lesson seems to emphasize that fact. Just look at how often expressions of time are used, both in the narrative present (i.e., the now of the time in the story) and in reference to the future. The importance of the present is underlined with references to the now in verses 22, 29, 36-37 (Anna's age), and 38a ("at that moment"). The present is important in this story, of course, because it signals what's coming in the future, in particular, God's crucial act of saving humanity. So, this passage is dotted with references to this future: Simeon's anticipation of "the consolation of Israel" (v. 25); the salvation God has prepared for the people (v. 31); the anticipation of Jesus' toppling of the social structure (v. 34); and "looking for the redemption of Jerusalem" (v. 38b). The dynamics of this passage are propelled by time. More exactly, the passage's animation comes from the delicate relationship between the importance of this very moment and the future foreshadowed in the present.
Timing is everything, and Christmas is about timing. It is also about the dynamic relationship between the present and the future. Christmas celebrates the enormity of the birth of Christ -- what that means in the whole economy of God's plan. However, this singular event at Bethlehem steers us into the future. The timing of the birth of Jesus entails what God will eventually do with this event. In part the Nativity of our Lord fixes our attention on the past and especially that one Holy night. That is important. Yet this is only one dimension of the timing of Christmas. The other is the implicit promise given us in Christ's birth. The promise is the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem -- our consolation and our redemption. Or, as Paul would put it, the promise is that, as children of God, we are heirs of what God has in store for us in the future. Oddly enough, weeks ago Advent turned our attention to the future in anticipation of Christ's birth. Now we have reached that time. Christ is born, and we celebrate that event. However, again, our eyes are turned toward the future. It is a future shaped by the birth of the Bethlehem baby. Advent and Christmas combine forces to help us straddle the past and the future while standing in the present.
Our Christian lives are always planted in the present but stretched both backward and forward in time. In this clumsy position, we are more likely to lose our balance and tumble over. Then we forget how important timing is. Yet in such an awkward posture, stretched between times, it is easier to remember that timing is everything. It was for God's plan. It is for us. Is this the time to set out on what for us is a new venture? Might this be the fullness of time when we should speak honestly with a friend about something that has been bothering us? Is this the time we should finally admit that we can make it on our own? For what might this present time be the fullness of time for you?
Timing is everything, so we are well advised to use this Christmastime as a period of appropriation and anticipation. Indeed, the church needs the time of Sundays of Christmas to absorb it all. Unlike our cultural celebration, we cannot take it all in on one day and then move on. We need to tarry here and ponder what we celebrate and its meaning for our lives. Timing is everything, and this is not the time to rush on.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 61:10--62:3
This text continues with the passage that we read from Isaiah 61 on the Third Sunday in Advent. The preacher should therefore refer to the exposition for that Sunday in this issue of Emphasis. There the historical context and meaning of the text are explicated.
As is sometimes the case with the lectionary, it has begun with the ending of one pericope and joined it to the beginning of another. Verses 10 and 11 in chapter 61 form the ending of that chapter's long poem. Verses 1-3 in chapter 62 are the beginning of the poem that continues through 62:9. However, the two portions have some content in common, and we can treat them together.
In 61:10-11, the Judean community breaks forth into praise, exulting that it has been clothed with God's salvation, like a bride or groom clothed with their wedding garments. Israel is often pictured in the Old Testament as the bride of God (cf. Hosea chs. 1-3 and Jeremiah 2:1-3), just as the church and the new Jerusalem are portrayed by that metaphor in the New Testament (Mark 2:19-20 and parallels; John 3:29; Revelation 21:2). And the thought here is that the Lord will so cover the Judean community with salvation that it will be as if that is the clothing that the Judeans wear. They will be wrapped in God's salvation, covered, garbed with it.
As a result, in verse 11, the community expresses its faith in God's fidelity to his promises. The people confess that as surely as the earth brings forth vegetation, so surely will the Lord God (the title used also in 61:1) cause his saving righteousness and praise to spring up before the eyes of all the nations as a witness to them. Judah will be saved, and all peoples with her. Therefore she rejoices.
That has not yet taken place in the lives of the Judeans who are the object of these promises, however. Indeed, if we examine the living conditions of the Judeans who returned to Palestine from Babylonian exile, their lives seem anything but saved. They are still subjects of the Persian Empire, and they make up not a nation, but a struggling little congregation of priests and laity and leaders. Often they know poverty and inflation and hunger. They manage to rebuild their temple, but it is a pitiful little edifice compared to the temple that once was (cf. Haggai 2:3). They are constantly harrassed by opponents when they reconstruct Jerusalem's walls (cf. Nehemiah 4). The glorious promises made to them by the earlier Second Isaiah and here, Third Isaiah, have not come to pass. And this announcement of salvation in our text must have been received with a good deal of skepticism by those who heard it. All nations will see Judah's salvation? Hardly!
For that reason, in 62:1-3, the reformed prophets reassure the struggling Judeans that intercession before God will be made for them. One of the frequent functions of a prophet in the Old Testament is to intercede before God for his people (cf. Deuteronomy 9:25-29; Jeremiah 7:16; Amos 7:1-6), and in Isaiah 62:1, the prophet reassures the people that he will never cease praying for them. He will pound on God's door in prayer, as it were, until her vindication (that is, her forgiveness) "goes forth as brightness" and her salvation (her fullness of life) "as a burning torch" -- as light to be seen by all peoples everywhere (cf. 60:1-3). Then all nations will be drawn to Judah's light and will acknowledge that the Lord is their God also. In short, Judah here is promised that she will become the beginning center of the Kingdom of God on earth. God will delight in her and give her a new name and treasure her like a precious jewel in his hands.
Did that beckoning light ever dawn, and did the Kingdom of God ever begin on earth? Not in Old Testament times. That is the strange thing about the Old Testament prophecies -- they often end up in the air, unfinished and unfulfilled. And whenever we read the Old Testament, we always have to ask: "Did God keep these glowing promises?"
The Word of God never fails, good Christians, and in the fullness of time, God kept his promises. He gathered them all up and incarnated them in Jesus Christ, born at Bethlehem, and brought them to fulfillment. For in our Lord Jesus, God did indeed begin his kingdom. Do you remember the words of our Lord as he began his preaching? "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). And in Luke, "If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:20). There is the beginning of God's universal reign over all the earth, there in that man from Nazareth -- in that one clothed in the pure righteousness of his Father, bringing God's promises of comfort and freedom and joy to all people.
There too, in Jesus Christ, is the light that will draw all nations to himself -- the "light of the world" (John 8:12; 9:5), "the true light that enlightens everyone" (John 1:9), the light that "shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).
Do we realize, then, that if we trust in Jesus Christ and if we let him live in us (cf. Galatians 2:20), we participate in his righteousness and in his life-giving light? Certainly we have no righteousness and light of our own, do we? We are too much soiled with our selfishness and sin that cast a shadow over any light we possess in ourselves. But in Jesus Christ, by trust in him and his victory over sin and death, we are counted righteousness and light in the eyes of our God, and we become also "the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14), saved, vindicated, forgiven, treasured, as Judah was promised she would be.
Then, says our text, all nations will be drawn to the salvation of God that he makes evident in our lives, and all peoples too will confess that our Lord is their Lord and our God is their God. Thus, God will spread the salvation of his kingdom over all his earth. And the praise that we hear in our text will be the praise of all men and women everywhere: "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness."
