Isaiah 61:10-62:3

By the end of the book of Isaiah, it's hard to say who the author is or what time this is being written. But the book has taken us on a journey away from the homeland, then back to its burned out remains. Yet, the longing for peace and unity remain. Those words are contained in the name Jerusalem. I won't play around too much with etymology here, but the passage has a feeling of putting hope in a place and a time that was better for these people. It's a little more than just nostalgia for happier times in the past, but not much more.

Claims like this from a prophet remind me of the movie, "Escape from San Francisco". It was the sequel to "Escape from New York". Both are dystopias where whole cities are walled off and the dregs of society are imprisoned. The "San Francisco" version begins with the story of a crazy politician who predicts an earthquake will separate San Francisco from the rest of the United States. Punishment for their sins obviously. Then his random prediction comes true, so it's now prophecy. He becomes President for life. I'm sure there were lots of "Isaiahs" in the world at the time this was written, claiming their city would last forever because of their god.

Galatians 4:4-7

Galatians is an important book in understanding the allegory of Christ's crucifixion and Paul's meaning for it. Unfortunately, what the Lectionary gives us is this short section that sounds like Jesus was a real person. This is one of very few verses from Paul that use words like "born of a woman". He does not further elaborate on this as a physical event or speak of Jesus' family life anywhere else. There is a "brother" mentioned, but it's not clear it is the family type brother or companion type.

Just down the page, Galatians 4:24, he is giving a little sermon using the sons of Abraham story and he says, "Now this may be interpreted allegorically". It's an allegory about being born and children being symbols for cities. Why should we interpret his own use of "slave" and "child" and "born" literally?

You could begin this questioning by asking why Paul would mention "of a woman" when discussing birth? Is there some other way one is born when we are talking about literal birth? Not for humans. It also says "sent", assuming he already exists. You could explain these away, but you would still have trouble harmonizing a literal birth here with the previous 3 chapters. He preaches on the symbolism of Abraham and Sarah. He says Christians are heirs to this covenant. To bring them into it, Jesus was allegorically born to Hagar, the slave woman, so he could be sacrificed by those who are still stuck in the world of the Torah law, the Old Testament covenant, and this would allow Christians to be "born" of the allegorical Sarah, the free woman.

If you want to do some googling, you could find some who say "woman" here means "wisdom". I can't confirm or deny that. Some translations, not the least of which is the King James Version, say "made" under the law instead of "born". And as I mentioned, most say "sent", which is consistent with all the times Christians make claims about Jesus being at the right hand of God from the beginning. Interpret this as allegory and I think the message is clear. Try to take it literally, and it gets murky

Luke 2:22-40

We see another of Luke's male-female parallelisms in this passage about Jesus as a baby. And as Elizabeth before, the woman is a more positive example of faith. She is called a prophet, the only woman explicitly called a prophet in the New Testament. Simeon has waited for the messiah all his life and is happy about it, but Anna is ready for action.

First, we are told what ritual this is, and that there was a sacrifice. Fortunately, most churches don't do that anymore, and even at this point in history, it is more symbolic, not a large animal or your own child. Rituals like this are always about the cycle, the beginning of a new life and recognition of the contribution of others. Those others may be at the end of their life, or perhaps already gone. In this case, Simeon represents the end. This is Luke, so the Gentiles get mentioned, although for them Jesus is just a "light", an inspiration to be witnessed, while the people of Israel get "glory". Simeon reminds us that salvation is not all fun and games. There's going to be some conflict. Anna gets to do the sermon and we're done.

We get a prelude here, a look at how this will all go. Some may have expected something more than a baby when the messiah was revealed, but that's what they got. This is still true today as people look for a savior in politics or science or their favorite team. We want them fully formed, fitting our expectations and helping us do what we already know we're supposed to do. Instead, they got someone who said the prophecies had been fulfilled, performed a few miracles to make sure you knew it was really him, then died. He didn't try to reach high office or invent some new strategy for workers getting more input to management. More often than not, he told people they knew what had to be done, that the law was already written on their hearts, that simply caring for each other was more important than anything.