©Photo. R.M.N. / R.-G. Ojda
Above: The Visitation
Image in the Public Domain
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The Collect:
Almighty God, you gave us your only Son
to take on our human nature and to illumine the world with your light.
By your grace adopt us as your children and enlighten us with your Spirit,
through Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 20
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The Assigned Readings:
Micah 4:1-5 (December 22)
Micah 4:6-8 (December 23)
Luke 1:46b-55 (Both Days)
Ephesians 2:22-22 (December 22)
2 Peter 1:16-21 (December 23)
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And Mary said:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
and my spirit exults in God my savior;
because he has looked upon his lowly handmaid.
Yes, from this day forward all generations will call me blessed,
for the Almighty has done great things for me.
Holy is his name,
and his mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear him.
He has shown the power of his arm,
he has routed the proud of heart.
He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich sent empty away.
He has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of his mercy
–according to the promise he made to our ancestors–
of his mercy to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.
–Luke 1:46-55, The Jerusalem Bible (1966)
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One function of rhetoric regarding the fully realized Kingdom of God is to criticize the errors of human social, economic, and political systems. Exploitation of people, often via the artificial scarcity of wealth, has been a serious problem for a long time. Many of the hardest working people are among the poorest, for many economic systems are rigged to benefit a relative few people, not the masses, and therefore the society as a whole. Violence is among the leading causes of poverty and hunger, corruption frustrates poverty and creates more of it, and labeling groups of people “outsiders” wrongly for the benefit of the self-appointed “insiders” harms not just the “outsiders” but all members of society. Whatever we do to others, we do to ourselves. As even many antebellum defenders of race-based chattel slavery in the United States of America admitted, keeping a large population “in their place,” that is subservient to Whites, held back Whites and the entire society also. After all, if keeping a large population “in their place” was to be a reality, who was going to keep them there without forgoing other tasks? In human brotherhood free people could have advanced together, but slavery delayed the society in which it existed.
In Christ, we read in Ephesians 2, we are:
no longer strangers and aliens, but…citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord….
–Verses 19-21, The New Revised Standard Version (1989)
2 Peter 1 reminds us “cleverly concocted tales” to quote The Revised English Bible (1989), form the basis of the declaration of the majesty and power of Jesus. The oral tradition, which informs many canonical writings, has a flexible spine which preserves the core of stories yet permits variation in recall of minor details. Nevertheless, the narrative retains its integrity, even if it contradicts itself about, for example, in whose house a woman anointed Jesus. So, without committing the error of biblical literalism, I affirm that something happened and that we can have at least an outline of what that was.
This is a devotion for December 22 and 23, two of the last three days of Advent. This is a time when I complain about the inaccuracy of many manger scenes. The shepherds, from the Gospel of Luke, were at Bethlehem. The Magi, from the Gospel of Matthew, were at Nazareth a few years later. What are they doing in the same visual representations? Why have more Christians, churches, and artists not paid attention to these details? Regarding those details I acknowledge that, even if all of them are not literally true, something still happened and we can have some reliable idea about what that was. Via the Incarnation God broke into human history and started a new chapter in the grand narrative of salvation. That is no “cleverly concocted tale.”
God, via Jesus and other means, seeks to reconcile us to God and to each other. Part of this reconciliation is the correction of social injustices, the perpetuation of which provides certain benefits to many of us while harming us simultaneously. In baby Jesus we have a reminder that God approaches us in a variety of ways, some of which we do not expect. We might miss some of them because we are not looking for them. Our functional fixedness is counterproductive.
God’s glorious refusal to fit into the proverbial boxes of our expectations challenges us to think and act anew. May we rise to the challenge.
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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Adapted from this post:
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BLOGA THEOLOGICA 
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