FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
30 Dec 2012
FIRST LESSON
Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3
Third Isaiah sings a hymn of praise to God for redeeming Israel from the Babylonian bondage. A new name indicates a new status. Jacob, for instance, was renamed Israel. Here the nation of Jews is to have a new name, which in fact happened. The names of the old Jewish states, Israel and Judah, are abandoned and the new state which the Jews were now to establish, with Jerusalem as its capitol, was to be called Judea.
SECOND LESSON
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
Our reading is part of Paul’s argument that we are justified (set right with God) by faith, not by anything we do or any way we worship. The Jews, in Paul’s opinion (and he is one), barely managed to be justified under the disciplinary Jewish law. With the coming of Christ we are freed from such inadequate rule because we are justified by faith. Now we are a new kind of child, the holy spirit teaching us to cry “Abba,” Daddy—a child-like faith in a parent-like God.