Sunday after Theophany. Octoechos Tone 7. Synaxis of the Holy and Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John.
Ephesians 4:7-13; Acts 19:1-8; Matthew 4:12-17; John 1:29-34.
Read Matthew 4:12-17
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
“Where are you from?” Now there’s a conversation starter! You learn a lot about a person – their family background, formative transitions in their life. Unfortunately, some of what we may learn and appreciate about another person may be clouded by our preconceptions of their answer to that question. We may think more or less of a person because of where they are from.
Zebulun and Naphtali were not great places for a Jewish religious leader to be from. They were equated with everything Israel had gotten wrong in their relationship with God. They were situated just north of hated Samaria. During the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Tribes, they were assimilated by partial deportation toAssyria and partial importation of other peoples, because they “sinned against the LORD their God.” (2 Kings 17:7)
When the time approached for the Babylonian judgement upon Judah in the south, the prophesy of Isaiah in today’s gospel reading tells King Ahaz of a coming glorious reversal of a previous humiliation of Zebulun and Naphtali as a sign that he should trust in God, the same prophesy that says,
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government will be upon his shoulder,
and his name will be called
“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)
Yet, by the time of Jesus’s ministry, Pharisees in Jerusalem would dismissively claim that “no prophet is to rise from Galilee”. (John 7:52)
Time and again we see that God the Son not only condescended to be Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14), He purposely went to be among those who would be misjudged as no one that God could possibly be among. Let us not make that misjudgment. Meet Christ in others; bring Christ to others.