According to the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship (ILCW) Lectionary (1973), as contained in the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) and Lutheran Worship (1982)
The kings in Isaiah 7:10-17 were Ahaz and Hezekiah of Judah. Immediately–in context–God was with Judah and the leadership of that kingdom during the Syro-Ephraimite War. The conception of the future King Hezekiah to an almah (young woman) was the sign of this.
YHWH is the King of Glory in Psalm 24.
Jesus was the king in Romans 1:1-7. The death and resurrection of Christ revealed in yet another way that he was the Son of God. (May we avoid the heresy of Adoptionism.)
Herod the Great was a client king of the Roman Empire. To accuse Herod of being mean was to understate reality. The man ordered the deaths of relatives and strangers alike.
Therefore, I, as a historian, attest that the story of the Massacre of the Innocents is plausible. It is consistent with the character of Herod the Great.
Matthew 1:18 quotes and reapplies Jeremiah 31:15, a text about Israel, personified as Rachel, weeping for her lost children, exiles during the Babylonian Exile. Jeremiah 31:16 predicts the return of the exiles, though. There is hope, even if it is deferred sometimes.
That must have been cold comfort to grieving parents, though.
As we approach the twelve days of Christmas, may all of us cling to hope. That hope may seem like cold comfort, especially if we grieve the absence of someone who has died or has not been able to attend for another reason. I need encouragement to cling to hope as much as the next grieving person; I know the feeling of more than one “blue Christmas.” Yet hope abides.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
JANUARY 8, 2022 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SAINT THORFINN OF HAMAR, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP
THE FEAST OF A. J. MUSTE, DUTCH-AMERICAN MINISTER, LABOR ACTIVIST, AND PACIFIST
THE FEAST OF ARCANGELO CORELLI, ITALIAN ROMAN CATHOLIC MUSICIAN AND COMPOSER
THE FEAST OF NICOLAUS COPERNICUS AND GALILEO GALILEI, SCIENTISTS
THE FEAST OF HARRIET BEDELL, EPISCOPAL DEACONESS AND MISSIONARY
THE FEAST OF SAINT PEPIN OF LANDEN, SAINT ITTA OF METZ, THEIR RELATIONS, AND SAINTS AMAND, AUSTREGISILUS, AND SULPICIUS II OF BOURGES, FAITHFUL CHRISTIANS ACROSS GENERATIONAL LINES
Ahaz, King of Judah (reigned 743/735-727/715 B.C.E.) was hardly a pious monotheist. In fact, he practiced idolatry openly. 2 Kings 16 and 2 Chronicles 28 gave him scathing reviews. Ahaz, confronted with an alliance of Israel and Aram against him, chose to rely on Assyria, not God. That was a really bad decision. Nevertheless, God sent a sign of deliverance; a young woman of the royal court would have a baby boy. God would not only protect Judah but judge it also.
Surely God is our salvation, but how often do we take the easy way out and not trust in God? When God arrives in the form of a helpless infant, as in Matthew 1, one might not recognize the divine presence. What we expect to see might prevent us from seeing what is in front of us for what it is. God approaches us in many guises, many of them unexpected.
At first reading Romans 1:4 might seem surprising, perhaps even similar to the Adoptionist heresy.
…and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord….
—The New Revised Standard Version (1989)
One might think of John 1:1-18, which declares that the Son is co-eternal with the Father. One might also ponder the baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22; John 1:32-34) as well as the preceding testimony of St. John the Baptist in each Gospel. One might even recall the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8; Matthew 17:1-13; Luke 9:28-36).
The proclamation mentioned in Romans 1:4 need not contradict those other proclamations. No, one should interpret it as a subsequent proclamation that Jesus was the Son of God. One should notice the theological context in Romans 1: Easter as the beginning and foretaste of the prophesied age of divine rule on Earth.
“Kingdom of God” has more than one meaning in the New Testament. Usually, though, it indicates divine rule on Earth. This kingdom is evident in the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels, written after the death of St. Paul the Apostle. The Kingdom of God is both present and future; it is here, yet not fully.
As we, being intellectually honest readers of scripture, acknowledge the existence of certain disagreements regarding the dawning of the age of God, according to St. Paul and the authors of the canonical Gospels, may we also never cease to trust in God, regardless of how much evil runs rampant and how much time has elapsed since the times of Jesus and St. Paul. God keeps a schedule we do not see.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
MARCH 15, 2018 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SAINT ZACHARY OF ROME, POPE
THE FEAST OF SAINTS JAN ADALBERT BALICKI AND LADISLAUS FINDYSZ, ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS IN POLAND
THE FEAST OF OZORA STEARNS DAVIS, U.S. CONGREGATIONALIST MINISTER, THEOLOGIAN, AND HYMN WRITER
THE FEAST OF VETHAPPAN SOLOMON, APOSTLE TO THE NICOBAR ISLANDS
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
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Assigned Readings:
Isaiah 66:7-11
Psalm 80:1-7
Luke 13:31-35
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Restore us, O God of hosts;
show us the light of your countenance,
and we shall be saved.
–Psalm 80:7, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The reading from Isaiah 66 exists in an immediate literary context. God does not need sacrifices, we read, but the system of sacrifices exists for human benefit. Some people make a mockery of sacrifices; God mocks them in return. No, God tends to the faithful and consoles Jerusalem. Once again, divine judgment and mercy coexist.
Jesus laments over Jerusalem in Luke 13:31-35. Many prophets have died unjustly there. Christ’s life was at risk during the lamentation.
Advent, the time of preparation for Christmas, is an appropriate occasion to recall the violence of the world into which Jesus came, in which he lived, and in which he died. Yes, the birth of Jesus is a cause for celebration, but even the Christmas season provides sobering moments. December 26 is the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr. December 28 is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. And December 29 is the Feast of St. Thomas Becket, the “troublesome priest” and Archbishop of Canterbury whom agents of King Henry II killed at Canterbury Cathedral. We should be happy during Advent and Christmas, but we should also note the coexistence of divine light and the darkness of the world.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
AUGUST 20, 2015 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF JOHN BAJUS, U.S. LUTHERAN MINISTER AND HYMN TRANSLATOR
One of the great virtues of High Churchmanship is having a well-developed sense of sacred time. So, for example, the church calendars, with their cycles, tell us of salvation history. We focus on one part of the narrative at a time. Much of Protestantism, formed in rebellion against Medieval Roman Catholic excesses and errors, has thrown the proverbial baby out with the equally proverbial bath water, rejecting or minimizing improperly the sacred power of rituals and holy days.
Consider, O reader, the case of Christmas–not in the present tense, but through the late 1800s. Puritans outlawed the celebration of Christmas when they governed England in the 1650s. Their jure divino theology told them that since there was no biblical sanction for keeping Christmas, they ought not to do it–nor should anyone else. On the other hand, the jure divino theology of other Calvinists allowed for keeping Christmas. Jure divino was–and is–a matter of interpretation. Lutherans, Anglicans, and Moravians kept Christmas. Many Methodists on the U.S. frontier tried yet found that drunken revelry disrupted services. Despite this Methodist pro-Christmas opinion, many members of the Free Methodist denomination persisted in anti-Christmas sentiment. The holiday was too Roman Catholic, they said and existed without
the authority of God’s word.
Thus, as the December 19, 1888 issue of Free Methodist concluded,
We attach no holy significance to the day.
–Quoted in Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), page 180. (The previous quote also comes from that magazine, quoted in the same book.)
Many Baptists also rejected the religious celebration of Christmas. An 1875 issue of Baptist Teacher, a publication for Sunday School educators, contained the following editorial:
We believe in Christmas–not as a holy day but as a holiday and so we join with our juveniles with utmost heartiness of festal celebration….Stripped as it ought to be, of all pretensions of religious sanctity and simply regarded as a social and domestic institution–an occasion of housewarming, and heart-warming and innocent festivity–we welcome its coming with a hearty “All Hail.”
–Quoted in Schmidt, Consumer Rites, pages 179 and 180
Presbyterians, with their Puritan heritage, resisted celebrating Christmas for a long time. In fact, some very strict Presbyterians still refuse to keep Christmas, citing their interpretation of jure divino theology. (I have found some of their writings online.) That attitude was more commonplace in the 1800s. The Presbyterian Church in the United States, the old Southern Presbyterian Church, passed the following resolution at its 1899 General Assembly:
There is no warrant for the observance of Christmas and Easter as holy days, but rather contrary (see Galatians iv.9-11; Colossians ii.16-21), and such observance is contrary to the principles of the Reformed faith, conducive to will-worship, and not in harmony with the simplicity of the gospel in Jesus Christ.
–Page 430 of the Journal of the General Assembly, 1899 (I copied the text of the resolution verbatim from an original copy of the Journal.)
I agree with Leigh Eric Schmidt:
It is not hard to see in this radical Protestant perspective a religious source for the very secularization of the holiday that would eventually be so widely decried. With the often jostling secularism of the Christmas bazaar, Protestant rigorists simply got what they had long wished for–Christmas as one more market day, a profane time or work and trade.
–Consumer Rites, page 180
I affirm the power of rituals and church calendars. And I have no fear of keeping a Roman Catholic holy day and season. Thus I keep Advent (December 1-24) and Christmas (December 25-January 5). I hold off on wishing people
Merry Christmas
often until close to Christmas Eve, for I value the time of preparation. And I have no hostility or mere opposition to wishing anyone
Happy Holidays,
due to the concentrated holiday season in December. This is about succinctness and respect in my mind; I am not a culture warrior.
Yet I cannot help but notice with dismay the increasingly early start of the end-of-year shopping season. More retailers will open earlier on Thanksgiving Day this year. Many stores display Christmas decorations before Halloween. These are examples of worshiping at the high altar of the Almighty Dollar.
I refuse to participate in this. In fact, I have completed my Christmas shopping–such as it was–mostly at thrift stores. One problem with materialism is that it ignores a basic fact: If I acquire an item, I must put it somewhere. But what if I enjoy open space?
I encourage a different approach to the end of the year: drop out quietly (or never opt in) and keep nearly four weeks of Advent and all twelve days of Christmas. I invite you, O reader, to observe these holy seasons and to discover riches and treasures better than anything on sale on Black Friday.
Pax vobiscum!
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
NOVEMBER 25, 2013 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SQUANTO, COMPASSIONATE HUMAN BEING
THE FEAST OF JAMES OTIS SARGENT HUNTINGTON, FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF THE HOLY CROSS
–Martin Luther; translated by William James Kirkpatrick
Yesterday I sang in my parish choir’s performance of the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah. We dropped “His yoke is easy and his burden is light,” culminating instead in the Hallelujah Chorus. The concert was glorious and spiritually edifying for many people.
There are still a few days of Advent left. So I encourage you, O reader, to observe them. Then, beginning sometime during the second half of December 24, begin to say
Merry Christmas!
and continue that practice through January 5, the twelfth and last day of Christmas. And I encourage you to remember that our Lord and Savior was born into a violent world, one in which men–some mentally disturbed, others just mean, and still others both mean and mentally disturbed–threatened and took the lives of innocents. Names, circumstances, empires, nation-states, and technology have changed, but the essential reality has remained constant, unfortunately.
The Hallelujah Chorus, quoting the Apocalypse of John, includes these words:
The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
That is not true yet, obviously. But that fact does not relieve any of us of our responsibilities to respect the Image of God in others and to treat them accordingly. We must not try to evade the duty to be the face and appendages of Christ to those to whom God sends us and those whom God sends to us. We cannot save the world, but we can improve it. May we do so for the glory of God and the benefit of others.
May the peace of Christ, born as a vulnerable baby and executed as a criminal by a brutal imperial government, be with you now and always. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
DECEMBER 17, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF MARIA STEWART, EDUCATOR
THE FEAST OF EGLANTYNE JEBB, FOUNDER OF SAVE THE CHILDREN
THE FEAST OF FRANK MASON NORTH, U.S. METHODIST MINISTER
Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God,
and open our ears to the words of your prophets,
that, anointed by your Spirit, we may testify to your light;
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 19
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Assigned Readings:
1 Kings 18:1-18 (Monday)
2 Kings 2:9-22 (Tuesday)
Psalm 125 (Both Days)
Ephesians 6:10-17 (Monday)
Acts 3:17-4:4 (Tuesday)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The scepter of the wicked shall not hold sway over the land allotted to the just,
so that the just shall not put their hands to evil.
–Psalm 125:3, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
–The Nicene Creed, in The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 359
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The assigned readings for these two days, taken together, speak of prophets, water, and the reality of evil.
As St. Paul the Apostle reminds us, evil exists. I harbor strong doubts regarding personalized evil (as in the Satan, the theology of which changes greatly within the pages of the Bible), but I am certain that evil exists. King Ahab, whom the prophet Elijah accused correctly of troubling Israel, acted in evil ways toward others.
The theme of water also holds the readings together. Water is essential for life. The substance is especially precious in a barren wilderness. Water occurs in the lection from 1 Kings in the context of a drought, which the text describes as divine punishment for idolatry. The lesson from 2 Kings provides a mythological origin story for a freshwater spring crucial to agriculture. The metaphor of a spring from the heart of Jesus occurs in the Gospel of John, where God (Yahweh) and Jesus are the sources of the Holy Spirit. Yes, I know of disagreements regarding the proper interpretation and translation of John 7:38, but I defer to the overall context of the Johannine Gospel, in which the living water flows from God (Yahweh) or Jesus, not from the heart of any believer.
Jesus, who stands in chronological and spiritual lineage with the Hebrew prophets, invites each of us to take up his or her cross, follow him, and drink of the living water which flows from his heart. That water surpasses the value of all substitutes. May we drink deeply then act accordingly.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
OCTOBER 26, 2014 COMMON ERA
PROPER 25: THE TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
THE FEAST OF SAINT ALFRED THE GREAT, KING OF THE WEST SAXONS
THE FEAST OF SAINT CEDD, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF LONDON
THE FEAST OF DMITRY BORTNIANSKY, COMPOSER
THE FEAST OF PHILLIP NICOLAI, JOHANN HEERMANN, AND PAUL GERHARDT, HYMN WRITERS
Advent receives inadequate attention. The season is certainly not commercial. Indeed, Christmas receives much commercial attention even before Halloween, for retailers need the money from Christmas-related sales to sustain stores through other times of the year. I admit to being of two minds. On one hand I do my rather limited Christmas shopping at thrift stores, so my deeds reveal my creed. Yet I know that many jobs depend on Christmas-related sales, so I want retailers to do well at the end of the year. Nevertheless, I am not very materialistic at heart; the best part of Christmas is intangible. And nobody needs any more dust catchers.
Observing Advent is a positive way of dropping out of the madness that is pre-December 25 commercialism. The four Sundays and other days (December 2-24 in 2012) preceding Christmas Day are a time of spiritual preparation, not unlike Lent, which precedes Easter. Garrison Keillor used the term “Advent Distress Disorder” (ADD) in a monologue last year. Indeed, finding positive news in the midst of apocalyptic tones of Advent readings can prove difficult. Yet the good news remains and the light shines brightest in the darkness.
So, O reader, I invite you to observe a holy Advent. Embrace the confluence of joy and distress, of darkness and light. And give Advent all the time it warrants through December 24. Christmas will arrive on schedule and last for twelve days. But that is another topic….
Pax vobiscum!
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
NOVEMBER 6, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF WILLIAM TEMPLE, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
THE FEAST OF TE WHITI O RONGOMAI, MAORI PROPHET
THE FEAST OF SAINT THEOPHANE VERNARD, ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST, MISSIONARY, AND MARTYR IN VIETNAM
Isaiah 34 tells the destruction of Edom, a traditional foe of Judah. Then, in Isaiah 35, we read of the return of exiles from Judah. There is bad news for some, but it is good news for others.
The reading from Revelation contains part of a vision in progress. To read the chapter in isolation is to miss what precedes and succeeds it. The Lamb (Jesus), worthy to break the seals on the scroll, does so. War, pestilence, and death dominate much of the world. The martyrs wonder when God will avenge their deaths. And nature itself seems to come apart.
The imagery, which is disturbing, draws heavily from the Hebrew Scriptures and recent (for the initial audience) events. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius might have informed the chapter, for example. And pestilence and death were contemporary in the Roman Empire. Revolutions erupted in Roman Palestine from time to time, so violence was a recent memory.
How do we interpret disturbing recent events? Often we seek to see divine wrath in them. Sometimes we are correct; at other times we are imagining things or adding two and two, arriving at the sum of five. Yet some timeless lessons persist. Among them are:
God is in charge, and
Perpetual disobedience to God will not go unpunished.
Especially violent imagery might appeal most to those experiencing oppression, for such imagery tells them that God will avenge them. That analysis applies to the readings from Isaiah and Revelation. Yet there is more. All we need to do to find it is to continue reading. May we do so.
ADVENT, CHRISTMAS, AND EPIPHANY DEVOTIONS 
You must be logged in to post a comment.