The First Sunday of Christmas Year C

The First Sunday of Christmas

1 Samuel 2.18–20, 26
Colossians 3.12–17
Luke 2.41–52

The boyhood stories of Jesus and Samuel jar slightly with one another. Samuel’s mother deliberately takes him to the Temple in order to leave him there; Jesus’ parents intend to take him home, but leave him behind by mistake. Samuel, designated as assistant to Eli, the priest, is then called to be a prophet. Jesus, whom Luke’s reader already knows is the appointed King, appears here as a prodigious student of Israel’s traditions. For Luke, after all, the closer parallel to Samuel is John the Baptist, not Jesus: John, born by promise to a childless couple, does what Samuel eventually did and anoints the coming King...