Weekly Liturgy booklets
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Notes on the Service for January 23th, 2022
Neh. 8:1–3,5-6,8-10 • Ps. 19 • 1 Cor. 12:12–31a • Lk. 4:14–21 Continuing the Epiphany theme of divine self-disclosure, today we have reports of epiphanies in public readings of Scripture, those of Ezra in a square in Jerusalem and Jesus in a synagogue in Nazareth. Suitable for those reports would be the collect now assigned to Proper 28, “Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written....” With its petition that we may “answer readily the call of our Savior,” the present collect, a late 20th century American composition, fits the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ calling his first apostles, accounts used on this Sunday in 2020 and 2021. It also would fit next Tuesday’s feast of Paul’s being converted from persecutor to apostle, on January 25. Ezra the scribe instituted reforms among the returnees from exile who were reconstructing Jerusalem in the 5th century B.C. Today’s first lesson describes day-long public readings of a new edition of the Torah containing those reforms, including rules more strict than before prohibiting Sabbath work and intermarriage with Gentiles, and rules for more elaborate observances of holy days. Elders and Levites interpret the Hebrew text into the Aramaic language spoken by the populace. Although the public is dismayed at the severity of the prohibitions and at how they had previously neglected them, Ezra assures them they should feast in honor of God’s disclosure of the divine will. Time for repentance will come later. God is disclosed in the order of the skies, according to Psalm 19:1-6, and in the Torah as well, according to 19:7-11. The psalmist prays that his thoughts and words may accord with the laws in heaven and in Scripture. The last verse of this psalm is sometimes used before sermons. During ordinary seasons, readings from the epistles run in roughly serial order on their own track, related only coincidentally if at all to the other readings of Sundays. Today’s passage is an extended metaphor of the church as a body of many parts each with its own function, a metaphor which Paul is using to resist factionalism in the Corinthian Church.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus has returned from fasting and temptation. On a Saturday in the synagogue, he reads from the prophets. The passage which he reads is a favorite proof text in Christian interpretations of the prophets. Matthew and Luke will show Jesus quoting it to John the Baptist’s disciples who have asked if he is the messiah or not. The implication there and in today’s reading is that the one doing what Isaiah described is the one bringing Israel’s redemption, an epiphany through the Scriptures to life. Rev. Stephen Weissman Asheville, North Carolina Reprinted with permission.
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January 23th, 2022
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