January 4 | Christmas 2, Year A
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84 or Ps. 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
or Luke 2:41-52
or Matthew 2:1-12
God has a plan to redeem human beings from their slavery to disobedience and sin. His will has been revealed to us at various times, in various ways, through the history of his working in the world. This has been done in human story so that we might see and understand. Through the narrative we are given concrete acts, as in a play, that all lead us to a climax. Like a classical comedy, all the acts prepare us for a positive resolution that comes before the final curtain falls. It is Jesus Christ who is that resolution that makes sense of both the Old and the New Testaments.
In the Old Testament, Israel was God’s son. Through Israel, humankind would see how we were meant to live as individuals and a community. God gave Israel the Commandments as a blueprint for living as his son. When Israel disobeyed God the Father, the nation was disciplined but not disowned. God also gave Israel an important role in his plan for humanity. Through the Israelites’ obedience, the reality of his existence and nature was to be revealed to the rest of the world. It was a plan whose success was to be found not in its perfection, but rather in its prophetic nature. Through Israel we would know the eternal Son when he dwelt among us as the Incarnate Word.
This world’s powers tried to kill both Jesus and Moses, but they were spared. Jesus, like Moses, was to deliver God’s people from bondage and slavery. Moses led the people of God throughout the Exodus and Jesus is the pioneer of our salvation. As Moses gave the Law to Israel, Jesus would be the Word of God to the people of God. Jesus was protected by the disdain of the Jews of Judea for Nazareth (“Galilee of the Gentiles”), just as Moses was protected from the Pharaoh by the Egyptian disdain for shepherds.
It is important for St. Matthew to connect the Old and New Testament stories for us. There is one God with one plan for the salvation of the world. Just as he chose one people to be his subjects and witness to the world, he sent his one and only Son to be the one way of reconciliation with him.
When we see the parallels between God’s actions with Israel and Jesus, we must not stop there. Rather we glimpse that divine pattern running on to the present, realizing what God would have us do as the Church. As Christ’s body, we are to be the bearers of the gospel, God’s Word, to the nations. As with Israel and so too with the Church, God’s people are to be witnesses of God’s nature through the testimony of their life of obedience to him. In that way we become the vehicle of the message of redemption from bondage to sin and death and the portal of entry into the Promised Land—the kingdom of heaven. Once more, God has blessed his people with both an identity (sons and heirs) and an eternally relevant purpose (an important role in the story of salvation).
Look It Up: Ephesians 1:3-6
Think About It: If God is at our center, then there is always a profound reason for gratitude.
The Rev. Dr. Chuck Alley, former rector of St. Matthew’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, teaches anatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School.
