Above: Icon of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Image in the Public Domain
Loyalty and Renewal
DECEMBER 22, 2021
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The Collect:
Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.
With your abundant grace and might,
free us from the sin that binds us,
that we may receive you in joy and serve you always,
for you live and reign with the Father and
the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.
–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 20
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The Assigned Readings:
Isaiah 42:14-21
Psalm 113
Luke 1:5-25
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Who is like the LORD our God, who sits enthroned on high,
but stoops to behold the heavens and the earth?
He takes up the weak out of the dust
and lifts up the poor from the ashes.
He sets them with the princes,
with the princes of his people.
He makes the woman of a childless house
to be a joyful mother of children.
–Psalm 113:5-8, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
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The theme of pregnancy continues for the third consecutive set of pericopes. The warrior-like Yahweh of Isaiah 42 remains loyal to Israel, will redeem it, and “will scream like a woman in labor” (verse 14c, TANAKH: The Holy Scriptures, 1985). The reading from Luke 1 tells of the conception of St. John the Baptist, the great forerunner of his cousin, Jesus. Once again a barren woman becomes pregnant, losing the disgrace resulting from her childlessness in a patriarchal culture.
These are accounts of new life, both physical and spiritual. God, the pericopes tell us, is loyal to certain people on the basis of grace even when they are disloyal to God. (There is doom for others, however.) Is not God due loyalty? Nothing we can offer God can repay for divine grace, but God does not seek repayment. Our responsibility is to trust in God, loving God fully and our fellow human beings as we love ourselves. One way of expressing love for God is loving our neighbors.
This is a devotion for a day in the vicinity of December 25, Christmas Day. In Jesus, the author of the Gospel of John tells us, the Word (or Logos) of God “became flesh and lived among us” (1:14a, The New Revised Standard Version, 1989). Yet Jesus met with rejection (1:11). That rejection was an example of disloyalty to God.
May Christmas become for you, O reader, an occasion to renew your loyalty to God in Christ. May the season of Christmas be twelve days of spiritual renewal as you celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Merry Christmas!
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
AUGUST 21, 2015 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF JOHN ATHELSTAN LAURIE RILEY, ANGLICAN ECUMENIST, HYMN WRITER, AND HYMN TRANSLATOR
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https://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/loyalty-and-renewal/
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ADVENT, CHRISTMAS, AND EPIPHANY DEVOTIONS 
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