The First Sunday of Christmas Year B
Taken from Lectionary Reflections - Year B
Description
The First Sunday of Christmas
Isaiah 61.10—62.3
Galatians 4.4 –7
Luke 2.15–21
Galatians is one of the most moving of all Paul’s epistles. Paul is fighting for his calling in this epistle. The fight is partly for himself, because if he is wrong, and God has not called him to be an apostle to the Gentiles, then his whole life is wasted. But more importantly, it is for his converts, because if Paul has mistaken his vocation, then he has misled all those Gentiles who have given their lives to Christ through Paul’s preaching. The argument is passionate, personal and convoluted. There are passages of personal history, interspersed with technical and not always transparent pieces of scriptural analysis. There are calm and carefully reasoned passages, side by side with passages that are almost libellous. But this section in chapter 4 is at the heart of the whole argument.
It is hard for us today to hear the real pain and joy in this passage about sonship, but it speaks powerfully of what Paul has given up, and why. All through his childhood and early adulthood, Paul would have believed that he was special, because of his relationship with God...
Taken from Lectionary Reflections – Year B by Jane Williams