Sentence
Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, and be thankful. Colossians 3:14-15
Collect
God of community, whose call is more insistent than tie of family or blood: may we so respect and love those whose lives are linked with ours that we fail not in loyalty to you, but make choices according to your will; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Readings
This Week:
- 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26
- Psalm 148
- Colossians 3:12-17
- Luke 2:41-52
- Next Week:
- Jeremiah 31:7-14
- Psalm 147:12-20
- Ephesians 1:3-14
- John1:(1-9) 10-18
A Thought to Ponder
First Sunday after Christmas – John 1:1-18
And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us . . .
The Gospel for this first Sunday after Christmas is the beautiful Prologue hymn to John’s Gospel. With echoes of Genesis 1 (“In the beginning,” “the light shines on in darkness”), the Prologue exalts Christ as the creative Word of God that comes as the new light to illuminate God’s re-creation.
In the original Greek text, the phrase “made his dwelling place among is” is more accurately translated as “pitched his tent or tabernacle.” The image evokes the Exodus memory of the tent pitched by Israelites for the Ark of the Covenant. God sets up the tabernacle of the new covenant in the body of the Child of Bethlehem.
Christmas is more than a birth of a child, but the beginning of the Christ event that will transform and re-create human history, a presence that continues to this day and for all time In Jesus, the extraordinary love of God has taken our “flesh” and “made his dwelling among us.” In his “Word made flesh,” God touches us at the very core of our beings, perfectly expressing his constant and unchanging love.
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Sermon
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