INTRODUCTION TO T HE SCRIPTURE

Year B - THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT  

 

ISAIAH 61:1‑4, 8‑11.   God's justice was a constant theme of the great prophets of Israel.  In these lines of poetry from the unknown prophet of Israel's exile in Babylon, this theme applied to the promised return of the exiles to their homeland about 539 BC.  Not only would the ruined cities of Judea be rebuilt, but the ancient covenant between Israel and God would be renewed.  The end result would be a whole new quality of life for God's people. More than six centuries later, Jesus adopted the first verse of this passage as the basic theme for his ministry.

 

PSALM 126.  This was another of the songs that might  have been sung by pilgrims making their way up to the temple in Jerusalem. It celebrated Israel's deliverance from the Babylonian captivity. The concluding prayer asked for God's help in renewing the nation as the dry watercourses of the Negev desert and the reaping of an abundant harvest restored prosperity.

 

LUKE 1:47-55.  (Alternate)   Some churches prefer to use Mary’s Song, known as The Magnificat, as the psalm for this Sunday. It is actually a  psalm almost certainly adapted from the Song of Hannah at the birth of Samuel (1 Samuel 2:1-10. It contains many passages to be found in the traditional  Psalms of the Old Testament. Many scholars believe that Luke found it as a hymn sung by early Christian congregations.

 

1 THESSALONIANS 5:16‑24.  There is abundant cause for Christians to rejoice and to give thanks in all circumstances, Paul wrote.  Sound moral values and a holy life come from being obedient to the Spirit.  By so doing, we shall be ready for the coming of Christ which the early Christians expected at any moment.

 

JOHN 1:6‑8, 19‑28.   John's Gospel contains no story about the birth of Jesus.  The introductory paragraphs set that event in a cosmic context using metaphors such as life, light, glory and truth to describe God's full revelation in Jesus, the Word made flesh.   Then the focus shifts to John the Baptist and his ministry preparing the way for Jesus, the light of the world. John distinguished himself from Jesus as the one who is only a witness to the light. He thus set the stage for Jesus' appearance by reiterating this distinction when challenged by the religious leaders of Israel.

 

 

 


A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

 

 

ISAIAH 61:1‑4, 8‑11.   God's justice was a constant theme of the great prophets of Israel.  In these classical lines of Hebrew poetry, the unknown prophet of Israel's exile in Babylon, or from the school of his disciples, applied this theme to the promised return to their homeland. If the prophet’s disciples were the authors, then it shows considerable influence of the master. Its also has many links with the preceding and following poems in ch. 60 and 62. With emphasis on the reversal of conditions which the exiles had endured for two generations from 586-539 BCE.

 

It is surprising that the middle segment of the poem has been dropped from this reading.  It referred to the people of other nations serving Israel as shepherds and farm workers while Israel concentrated on its priestly role among the nations. This imaginative description of the future awaiting the returning exiles indicated how great their redemption would be. 

 

Similarly powerful imagery in the rest of the poem dramatically revealed the Israelites’ new status in history. Vv. 1-4 declares the new mission in which Israel will engage. Not only would the ruined cities of Judea be rebuilt, but the ancient covenant between Israel and God would be renewed.  The end result would be a whole new quality of life and purpose for God's people. They would serve as a herald of good news to oppressed and captive people, bringing assurance of God’s favour and comfort to those who mourn. They would enable others to sing praises of joy.

 

That theirs would be a missionary task becomes even clearer in the concluding segment (vv. 8-11). The return from exile and renewal of the ancient covenant expressed God’s  justice, righteousness and salvation which the exiles descendants would make known to other nations. The imagery of a new wardrobe which Israel would wear, like that of a bridegroom and bride dressed for their wedding, described how they would be prepared for their new role. Their new clothes symbolized the divine gifts of a moral and spiritual nature. As if that is not enough to make the point, imagery of growth in a garden reiterated how God would prepare the new Israel “to spring forth before all the nations” (vs. 11).

 


The poem was written in the first person, a characteristic of much of the poetry of Second Isaiah. Raised in a culture of almost total individualism, we may not fully understand how the ancient Israelites conceived of the covenanted people as a corporate personality and of a single prophet fulfilling a communal function as in this instance. This prophet in particular made use of this form to convey what lay ahead for the returning exiles. In his introduction to Isaiah 40-66, the late James Muilenburg, formerly of Union Theological Seminary, New York, proposed that in chs. 40-55, the community was still in Babylon while in chs. 56-66 it had already returned to Jerusalem. The issues which faced the latter group, such as those lifted up in this poem, were notably different from those still in exile. (Abingdon Press, 1951. The Interpreter’s Bible, V, 383.)

 

According the Luke’s Gospel (4:16-20), Jesus adopted the first verse of this passage as the basic theme for his ministry. Without question the apostolic church read it as a messianic prophecy. Some scholars have gone so far as to identify this poem with the Servant Songs, especially Isaiah 52:12-53:12. The eschatological significance of the message comes to the fore in the prophetic mission expressed in vs. 2: “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

 

 

PSALM 126.  This is another of the fifteen songs in the Hebrew scriptures bearing the title “A Songs of Ascent” (Pss. 120-134). Scholars differ as to their date, origin and use. The Hebrew Mishnah speculated that they were sung by the Levite chorus on the fifteen steps leading from the court of women to the court of Israel, but this interpretation, though imaginative, is doubtful. It does seem, however, that they could have been a special collection used by pilgrims making their way up to Jerusalem for one or other of the great festivals. It is also possible that over time the collection broadened to include some songs not directly related to pilgrimage. This psalm may be one of those later additions.

 

This psalm celebrated Israel's deliverance from the Babylonian captivity. The psalmist recalled this joyous time recounted by his ancestors and written down in several of the prophetic books (Isa. 55:12-13; Zech. 8:1-23; Hag. 2:1-23; Ezra). Those days were long past and life was not all that had been anticipated. In fact, Israel’s barren life resembled the Negeb desert. So the psalmist lamented the nation’s disappointment. In a concluding prayer, he asked for God's help in renewing the nation as the dry watercourses of the Negev desert were renewed by infrequent rains. Not rain, but tears of sorrow provided the desperately needed moisture. Yet hope flowed with the tears that an abundant harvest would restore prosperity.

 


Memories of Yahweh’s past interventions, especially in the return from exile, made this more than a forlorn hope. Because of the great things Yahweh had done in the past (vs. 3), the psalmist could fervently pray “restore our fortunes, O Lord,” (vs. 4). This short psalm gave full expression to Israel’s belief in a theocratic history. Scholars have also observed a residue of ancient fertility myths of death and revivification common to all Middle Eastern cultures in the sowing in sorrow and reaping in joy found in vs. 6. The image is of a sower carrying his seed in a sack slung over his shoulder keening a lament even as he scatters the seed. In the frequent droughts that ravaged the Holy Land, hope often depended on the next rainfall.

 

 

LUKE 1:47-55.  (Alternate)   Some churches prefer to use Mary’s Song, known as The Magnificat, as the psalm for this Sunday. Many scholars believe Luke found all the canticles or songs of the nativity narratives as  hymns sung by early Jewish Christian congregations. While they give voice to a deep piety, the words do not specifically relate to the characters who utter them.

 

In his magisterial work, The Birth of the Messiah, Raymond E. Brown claimed that their closest parallels are to be found in Jewish hymns and psalms from 200 BCE to 100 CE. Aprocryphal texts of that period such as I Maccabees, Judith, II Baruch, IV Ezra, and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls all contain hymns like these. The martial tone of these canticles seems more in keeping with the nationalistic theology of history many such Jewish psalms expressed.

 

Brown further claimed that they expressed the joy of a pious Jewish Christian group identified as the Anawim, or “Poor Ones,” who revered the temple and shared traditional Jewish views of a Davidic messianism. In Acts 2:43-47 and 4:32-37 there are references to the existence of such early communities in Jerusalem. 

 

Mary’s song was almost certainly adapted from the Song of Hannah at the birth of Samuel (1 Samuel 2:1-10. It contains many passages also to be found in the traditional Psalms of the Old Testament and Aprocrypha. It can be argued that the Magnificat is better attributed to Elizabeth than to Mary, as some manuscripts indicated. Brown believed that Mary’s song responded to that of Elizabeth in 1:42-45. Whereas Elizabeth praised Mary as the mother of the Messiah, Mary gave praise to God as the initiator of the

drama of salvation to which both women witnessed.

 

 

1 THESSALONIANS 5:16‑24.  There is abundant cause for Christians to rejoice and to give thanks in all circumstances, Paul wrote in what may have been his earliest letter. With Silas and Timothy, Paul had visited Thessalonika during his second missionary journey and his first


evangelistic foray into Macedonia (Acts 16-18). There they gained a few converts, probably both Jewish and Greek (Acts 17:4). Their chief opposition came from some of the Jewish population who forced them to leave hastily for Beroea, Athens, and then Corinth.

 

The main purpose of the letter was to give some instructions concerning the future advent of the Lord Jesus. Apparently the Thessalonians had not fully understood what Paul had taught them during his short stay there. How to live the Christian life while waiting for that anticipated Parousia also played a prominent part in the letter. What was to become the typical Pauline phrase, “in Christ,”  characterized much of Paul’s teaching.

 

This reading commends genuine love among the Christian fellowship and encourages the application of spiritual gifts to their living with one another in circumstances which provided anything but a favourable milieu. Note the number of those spiritual gifts named in this short passage: respect and esteem for spiritual leaders, peace among themselves, patience with those who are fainthearted and weak, magnanimity toward one another, rejoicing in constant prayer and thanksgiving, abstinence from every form of evil. Again and again in his correspondence with other Christian communities, Paul would return to and expand upon these same virtues (Romans 12, 1 Corinthiains 12-14, Galatians 5:16-6:10, Colossians 4:2-6). 

 

Note too the counsel “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of the prophets (or alternatively, do not despise prophecies” (vs.19-20).  This may be a reference to the Jewish scriptures which were the central feature of every synagogue service. Because there were as yet no “Christian scriptures,” those were the texts to which the earliest apostles and their converts turned to learn about the promised Messiah they believed Jesus of Nazareth to be.

 

Vs. 23 contains a word which has become the ultimate definition of what it means to be a Christian: “sanctify.” The technical meaning of the English word, of Latin derivation, is “to make holy.” Holiness is the Christian life. It comes about, Paul made clear, not by our efforts, but by God’s grace active in our lives. Here, it has profound implications of a spiritual and physical nature. To understand this we need only recall that the word holiness has the same Anglo-Saxon root as wholeness, healing and health. Jewish thought so familiar to Paul had no concept of any division between body and spirit. One of the alternate translations of the phrase “kept sound” is “complete.” This is coupled with “blameless,” free of guilt. Sound moral values, a holy and a healthy life come from being obedient to the Spirit, Paul said to the Thessalonians and to us. By so living we shall be ready for the coming of Christ which the early Christians expected at any moment.


While Paul did not articulate in detail any theological concept of the Trinity, he often wrote of what one might call the trinitarian experience. He did so unequivocally in this passage. He spoke of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as actively engaged in the daily lives of the believers (vss. 17, 18, 23). Then in vs. 24, he made the simple statement: “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.” He did not identity whether he referred to one or other of the three persons of the Trinity. It never would have occurred to him to do so. All were involved in the dynamic spiritual process we call “sanctification.” It is a One to one experience, yet it takes place within the faithful community where loving relationships with God and with each other are paramount.

 

 

JOHN 1:6‑8, 19‑28.   John's Gospel contains no story about the birth of Jesus.  The introductory paragraphs set that event in a cosmic context using metaphors such as Logos (Word), life, light, glory and truth to describe God's full revelation in Jesus, the Word made flesh. The focus shifted immediately to John the Baptist and his ministry preparing the way for Jesus, the light of the world. These excerpts from John 1 deal exclusively with the role of the Baptist.

 

The author of the gospel distinguished John the Baptist from Jesus as the one who is only a witness to the light. He set the stage for Jesus' appearance by reiterating this distinction when challenged by the religious leaders of Israel. Due to the domination of the whole eastern Mediterranean region, first by Hellenistic and then Roman imperial power, and the pervasive influence of the Greco-Roman culture, a plethora of Jewish eschatological writing had appeared in the late centuries before and first century after the time of Jesus. Jewish expectations of the Messiah  reached a very intense level. Typical of religious authorities in all ages, the established priesthood challenged every new prophetic voice. John the Baptist was no exception (vss. 18-22).

 


The Jews did not expect the Messiah to come  unannounced. At the end of the very last book of the OT, the obscure prophet Malachi, of the early 5th century BCE, we find a paragraph referring specifically to the prophet Elijah returning to prepare for “the great and terrible day of the Lord.” Similarly, Deuteronomy 18:15 contained a reference to a prophet like Moses who would be raised to whom the people would give heed. Acts 3:22 and 7:37 show that the apostolic church believed that Jesus himself fulfilled the messianic promise. The early church, probably taking their clues from Jewish contemporaries, interpreted the eschatological “the day of the Lord” as referring to the coming of Jesus whom the church claimed to be the Messiah/Christ.

 

Naturally, Jewish literature of the period and later did not share this conviction. Writing toward the end of the lst century CE, the author of the gospel wrapped this tradition into the challenge of the Jerusalem priesthood to John the Baptist. He rejected all three assumptions. He was not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet like Moses. Instead, the Fourth Gospel followed the tradition of the other three gospels in applying the opening words of the great prophet of the Babylonian Exile to the Baptist (Isaiah 40:3).

 

Skillful writer that he was, the author of John’s Gospel introduced all the key opposing groups in this introductory chapter. Whereas it first appeared that “the Jews” had sent the priests and Levites to accost John the Baptist (vs. 19), these challengers then were said to be  representatives of “the Pharisees” (vs. 24). In other words, the identity of the opposition  had moved from the general to the specific. The particular concern of the Pharisees was ritual purity and total adherence to the law of Moses. Jews did not need to be baptized because they were already “sons of the covenant.” The forerunners of the Messiah would baptize only those who converted to the true faith and so became members of the elect people, Israel. Thus, John’s ministry of preaching repentance leading to baptism was all wrong from the Pharisees point of view (vs. 25).

 

The Baptist’s reply clarified the distinction between the Jewish and Christian views of his ministry. Whereas his baptism with water symbolized a cleansing in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, there was one among them as yet unknown who would fulfill all the their messianic expectations. In subsequent decades, as the author of the Fourth Gospel well knew when he wrote, the greatest threat to the infant church had come not so much from the imperial powers of Rome, but from the Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem and the growing influence of the Pharisees in the synagogues of the Jewish Diaspora. The central issue in that struggle was whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. Like the rest of the NT, the Fourth Gospel had placed this issue at its very core.

 


One of the features of the Fourth Gospel is its curious way of defining where specific events took place. Vs. 28 places the locale of John’s baptistry “in Bethany across the Jordan.” That has a symbolic meaning: By passing through the waters of the Jordan in baptism, those who responded to John’s call for repentance symbolically repeated the entrance of God’s covenant people into the holy land. Some texts including the KJV and its source documents name the place Bethabara. Scholars believe that  in the 3rd century after knowledge of the actual site had been lost, apparently forever, Origen made a textual correction which was subsequently maintained in other manuscripts.

 

Another controversy has recently arisen about this site of a political and economic nature. If this location for John’s ministry is accurate, it lay on the eastern side of the river, currently  within Jordanian territory. A site on the west bank has traditionally been afforded that honor. But that site has been closed to pilgrimages and heavily mined against terrorist intrusion since the Six Day War of 1967 when Israel occupied the West Bank. Working with a Roman Catholic priest’s archeological research to guide them,  Jordanian archeologists have expensively developed a site on Wadi Kharrar, an eastern tributary of the Jordan, marked by baptismal pools and church ruins dating from the 4th to the 15th centuries. The Israeli government quickly responded to this challenge by refurbishing the west bank site within a secure military reservation to compete for anticipated tourist dollars. Two millennium after John, controversy still rages over his baptism.

 

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