Weekly Seeds: “Abolish to Establish”
Sunday, December 22, 2024
Fourth Sunday of Advent | Year C
Focus Theme:
“Abolish to Establish”
Focus Prayer:
Holy God of the Covenant, help us to embody your kindom as the Body of Christ. Amen.
Focus Scripture:
Hebrews 10:5-10 in conversation with Luke 1:39-55
Hebrews 10:5-10
5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body you have prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘See, I have come to do your will, O God’
(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).”
8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. 10 And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
46 And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name;
50 indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has come to the aid of his child Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
All readings for this Sunday:
Micah 5:2-5a • Luke 1:46b-55 or Psalm 80:1-7 • Hebrews 10:5-10 • Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)
Focus Questions:
What does it mean to abolish?
What does it mean to establish?
What are characteristics of the kindom of God?
What needs to be abolished for the reign of God?
What needs to be established for the reign of God?
Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay
I have been thinking about the abolitionist movement lately, specifically targeting the end of chattel slavery in America. In part, I have been connecting to the relentless pursuit of freedom for enslaved Africans by freed Africans as well as American citizens. When we tell the story of the abolitionist movement, the heroes often look more like the enslavers than the enslaved. As my American history high school teacher asserted, history is written by the victor. Even those committed to preserving and retelling these foundational truths about our nation’s history may have a lens that is skewed and allows them to identify with those who chose the right thing in the moment versus those who acquiesced to embracing evil or its close cousin, apathy. The appeal of mythology challenges truth telling, honest reckoning with the past, and transparent evaluation of current conditions.
In the focus texts, we hear the prophetic voice of two truth-tellers, Jesus and his mother Mary. While some venerate Mary as the mother of God, they often miss her significant role as a prophet who declares the kindom of God and the disruptive ministry that her child will come to realize. The Magnificat, beyond a song of praise, serves as notice to the world that the agent of divine interruption and profound change is being nurtured within her womb.
While Mary’s declaration happens when Jesus is in utero, the book of Hebrews presents his words as if Jesus enters the world as a fully formed, adult human. It’s a curious choice that in some ways ignores their birth and childhood. While the gospels are mostly silent from Jesus’ toddler years until the public launch of their ministry, those intervening years surely contributed to their development. Perhaps the writer of Hebrews seeks to reframe Jesus’ entry to include not only their birth but also the fullness of their life.
Christ said this as he “comes into the world,” which was a Semitic way of saying “when Christ was born.” While this phraseology could be used in Jewish tradition simply for birth, Christ’s ‘entry’ Is that of the eternal Son. Although the incarnation is clearly in view, the introductory verse is important not because it stresses a particular moment when Chrisl’s act of obedience to the divine will was made, but because it indicates that the cosmos is the sphere of the decisive sacrifice of Christ.”
Gert Jacobus Steyn
A cursory reading of the text could support a limited sacramental theology that insists that Jesus enters the world to be a sacrifice. In this view, the God who spared Abraham’s son would not do the same for his own. While scripture documents Jesus’ reluctance and plea to avoid torture and death, Jesus submits themselves to the will of God. Even in the sacrificial system, the will of God was not gratuitous violence and shed blood. The goal has always been restoration, individual but primarily communal. Speaking through the prophets of the First Testament as well as the Second, God’s will has been presented as the voice of truth to power. Deliverance, salvation, and redemption have been blessings bestowed on communities like the enslaved in Egypt of the Exodus narrative, the exiled during Babylonian rule, and the occupied and exploited under Roman reign.
To reduce the totality of the Christ event into the forgiveness of individual sins neglects the cosmic ends of the gospel. Through embodiment of the way of Christ, creation is saved, redeemed, and restored. Earthly conditions reflect heavenly reality.
To be clear, the temple system with its ritualistic sacrifices accounted for individual redemption and forgiveness. Yet, it retained a communal priority as grace and mercy ensured right standing within the community for the offender. The individual actions required to make things right with God did so through acknowledgement of hurt and repair of harm within the community. The temple system, despite its limitations, emphasized communal commitments and belonging. Corrupt implementation of that system ignored the communal concerns and capitalized on the extortion of the individual. Thus, the will of God was circumvented, distorted, and demeaned.
A final interpretive comment concludes this explanation of Ps 40:6-8: (“he abolishes the first in order to establish the second,” v. 9). Christ totally did away with “the first”: the animal sacrifices and everything associated with them—the Tabernacle in which they were sacrificed, the priesthood that sacrificed them, and the first covenant under which they were offered. The first system, however, was removed only so that “the second” could be permanently established. “The second” refers, first of all, to the “will” of God fulfilled by Christ. Verse 10 makes clear what this “will” was: “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
Gareth Lee Cockerill
Jesus entered the world not to reform a broken system but to abolish it as the system itself became irredeemable. In that system, the sacrifice had become the end rather than an instrument to facilitate reconciliation with the will of God, which Jesus came to establish.
We should not lose sight, however, of the fact that the author of Hebrews was using this language figuratively as a means of helping his hearers appropriate for themselves the significance of Jesus’ death for their relationship with God. He could not have imagined Jesus carrying physical blood into “heaven itself”: the blood is a metonym for Jesus’ absolute obedience and commitment to God, undeterred by the prospect of a bloody death. Jews reflected on the deaths of the martyrs for Torah in similar terms, positing that such extreme commitment to the covenant acted as the equivalent of an effecting atonement offering on behalf of the nation: but again it was their obedience, not their blood, that satisfied the alienated Deity and restored God’s favor toward the nation (2 Macc. 7:37–38; 8:5; 4 Macc. 6:29–31; 17:21–22; see deSilva 1998, 137–41). Jesus’ death can be similarly understood as an offering of representative obedience that restores God’s favor—as well as redirects humanity’s hearts back to God and pursuing what pleases God out of a desire to maintain this restored relationship.
Neil Elliott
That offering begins not with the trial, the events of Holy Week, or even the launching of the public ministry. It begins at the Incarnation. Coming into the world, for Jesus, reflects a sacrifice as significant as picking up their cross. Birth, like death, reflects a painful, bloody, and violent transition. While Jesus commits to fulfill the establishment of the kindom even with the sacrifice of death, the sacrifice of life should not be discounted or ignored as a necessary, revolutionary, and profound act to abolish the limits of sacrificial law to establish the transformative power of sacrificial love. That sacrificial love will break the bonds of oppression and liberate the marginalized. That sacrificial love will humble the powerful and lift up the lowly. That sacrificial love prioritizes the poor and convicts the rich. That sacrificial love offers the invitation to follow me.
Sacrificial love was made flesh, and for that love, the prophets proclaim and the people rejoice: Magnify the name of the Holy One, God and our Savior.
Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“my dream about the second coming”
By Lucille Clifton
mary is an old woman without shoes.
she doesn’t believe it.
not when her belly starts to bubble
and leave the print of a finger where
no man touches.
not when the snow in her hair melts away.
not when the stranger she used to wait for
appears dressed in lights at her
kitchen table.
she is an old woman and
doesn’t believe it.
when Something drops onto her toes one night
she calls it a fox
but she feeds it.
For Further Reflection
“The systems responsible for our oppression cannot be the same systems responsible for our liberation.” ― Derecka Purnell
“Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say ‘let it be done.'” ― John Brown
“Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing them a higher one.” ― Maria Weston Chapman
A preaching commentary on this text (with works cited) is at //ucc.org/SermonSeeds.
The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments below this post on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.
About Weekly Seeds
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Weekly Seeds is a service of Local Church Ministries of the United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.