Sunday, January 4, 2015 (full size gallery)
The new year has brought a rash of sickness to our community, including flu and other maladies. Everyone seems to catching it and it takes several days to get over it. We had only 32 in church with visitors. We remembered Betty’s birthday today who was unfortunately home with Clarence who was sick.
An interesting Sunday after a rain providing some beautiful light effects in and out of the church. Weather cool at the beginning of the day became almost balmy by the time of coffee hour.
Christmas 2 offers a set of standard readings over the 3 lectionary years. Two of the gospel readings are Epiphany readings with the the third from Luke that from Jesus going to the temple at age 12. This story appears only in Luke among the Gospels.The sermon chose this latter reading.
"Our temptation, as we enter into the New Year, is to let Christmas fade yet again into a distant memory, and to pack Christmas away with plans to pull it out again next year, but not to think of it in the meantime…Fred Craddock, in his commentary on Luke, says that at this point in Jesus’ life, he has “vague stirrings of his own identity, if not vocation. The circle of his awareness and the sense of a larger duty begin to widen and deepen beyond his home in Nazareth.So these vague stirrings on the part of Jesus make this reading an apt one for this Sunday after all, as a reminder to us to continue to enter into the story of Christmas, even when this season is past, so that we can widen our own circles of awareness and seek out our sense of larger duty. This story about Jesus in the temple reminds us to continue searching our souls as we seek our true identities, based on who we know Jesus to be, the Son of God."
Coffee hour went on this week with a wonderful array of foods – two soups, broccoli and cheese and pototo, ham and roast which with cheese made a wonderful sandwich and a salad. The dessert table was fabulous with trifle, persimmon bread and various cookies among other things.
We welcomed Boyd and Ken’s extended family. Epiphany is Tuesday and we will hold an Epiphany service, this time using evening prayer.
This Sunday’s commentary comes from "Preparing for Sunday"
Today’s readings assure us of God’s providential care. In Jeremiah, the lord looks forward to a day of reunion and restoration, of celebration and gladness. Paul proclaims that, from the creation of the world, God has worked to bring us into the fullness of Christ. In today’s gospel from Matthew, God leads the Holy Family out of danger and eventually back home again. God also leads the magi to the newborn child (RCL alternate). Luke describes the revelation of Jesus’ identity to Simeon and Anna
Old Testament – Jeremiah 31:7-14
Today’s reading comes from a section (chaps. 30–33) consisting of Jeremiah’s oracles of hope for an eventual renewal and restoration for Israel. This passage uses legal terms for the ransom or redemption of someone who has sold himself or herself into slavery. The right of redemption lay with the kinsman, a right that Jeremiah exercised with respect to his family’s field (chap. 32) and that he saw the lord exercising with respect to Israel, the child of God.
Psalm 84
This psalm combines elements of hymn (vv. 1, 10-11), lamentation and intercession (vv. 8-9). Likely composed on the occasion of a pilgrimage to the temple, the psalm express the strength of the psalmist’s longing for the temple and the trials and rewards of the journey
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
New Testament letters often answer questions or address problems in a community. Ephesians seems to have been written to teach Christians more about God’s great plans for the Church and the world. This teaching (chaps. 1–3) is followed by three chapters of counsel about how to conduct life until “the fullness of time” (v. 10) when all creation will be gathered up in Christ.
After the initial greeting, the greeting is displaced by a blessing in the form of a hymn. The hymn centers on the revelation of God in Christ, through whom believers are chosen and destined for adoption and for participation in Christ’s mission of redemption. In his thanksgiving, the author shows by example the importance of making requests of God in prayer, not to coerce God, but to allow believers to cooperate in the working out of God’s will.
Luke 2:41-52
Only Luke tells of the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem at age 12—the time a boy became a man and fully a member of the Jewish community. Since in Jesus’ time there was no idea of personality development from childhood to adult, Luke presents the child as already demonstrating the characteristic teaching wisdom that will be observed later in the adult Jesus. Thus Luke offers a preview of Jesus later life and ministry that will be dedicated to the proclamation of God’s kingdom. But for now he returns to an obscure life in Nazareth with his family.