From the Prophet Isaiah:
Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel
and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
I am the first and I am the last;
besides me there is no god.
Who is like me? Let them proclaim it,
let them declare and set it forth before me.
Who has announced from of old the things to come?
Let them tell us what is yet to be.
Do not fear, or be afraid;
have I not told you from of old and declared it?
You are my witnesses!
Is there any god besides me?
There is no other rock; I know not one.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Isaiah 44:6-8 (NRSV) – December 27, 2012.)
On the third day of Christmas the church calendar directs our attention to St. John the Evangelist and, again, the Daily Office lectionary falls in line. John is the gospeller whose wonderful prologue serves as the Gospel lesson at the Eucharist on Christmas Day (1:1-14) and on the first Sunday after Christmas (1:1-18). It is for me a much more meaningful Gospel of the Incarnation than Luke’s sweet story of innkeepers, shepherds, angels, and the virgin birth: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (v. 1)
John’s prologue speaks to me of a God who communicates and through communication creates, redeems, and saves. It reminds us of the story of creation in Genesis: “God said . . . .” and everything came into being.
Isaiah’s prophecy in today’s evening reading, I’m sure, is meant to underscore this. Isaiah, speaking on God’s behalf, demands communication from other gods who would seek to supplant the Almighty: “Let them proclaim . . . let them declare . . . who has announced? . . . let them tell.” And God reminds us that God is a communicator: “Have I not told you from of old and declared it?” Our God is a God who communicates, who is in relationship with his people, who comes among them to speak and to listen. The other gods are nothing but mute idols.
Or, at least, in Isaiah’s time, they were. As I write these words my television happens to be on; others in the family are watching a morning talk show and there are advertisements sprinkled among the stories of post-Christmas sales, politics, and “the fiscal cliff”. The gods of greed and consumption are communicating most loudly; the objects of modern worship are promoting themselves wantonly.
But are they listening? Do these gods hear the cries of the poor and homeless? Do these gods listen to the moans of the hungry and the sick? Do these gods pay heed to the needs of those who have no resources, who cannot pay homage in their temples of commerce?
These are gods for whom communication is one-way. They tell of themselves and they expect their worshipers to come . . . come and buy, come and consume, come and be consumed. But they do not listen. Only God the Word, incarnate in that baby celebrated in Luke’s sweet story, “became flesh and lived among us” and listens to us. “There is no other rock; I know not one.”
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
On the second day of Christmas the church remembers a murder, the martyrdom of Stephen, and our Daily Office lectionary won’t let us forget it. Often the readings of the Daily Office seem to have nothing to do with the season and they seldom are tied to a saint’s commemoration, but today the morning and evening readings tell the whole story in gruesome detail.
I was born and raised in the desert. The image of wilderness and dry land blossoming is one that touches my heart and excites my imagination. I love the desert. I love its stark and barren beauty, when the rains of spring kiss it and it blossoms . . . there’s nothing like it anywhere else. 
I want to ask you to read along as I re-read the collect for the day, the particular prayer of the Fourth Sunday in Advent: “Purify our conscience . . . . ” That’s enough, just those three words: “Purify our conscience . . . . ” Don’t you think that’s asking a lot of God? I mean really . . . purify the human conscience, that place in ourselves where we know all the wrongs we have done. Tall order, purifying that! But that’s what the prayer asks and in doing so it draws on the language of the Letter to Hebrews from which our second lesson today is taken.
Sort of buried in Jude’s moralizing about false teachers and those who follow them is an Advent message: “Look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” As I’ve been saying pretty consistently throughout the season, here and in my sermons, Advent is not so much about celebrating the birth of Jesus, wherever it was and whenever it was about 2,000 years ago, as it is about getting ready for his return, the parousia as seminary-educated folks like to say.
The first word of this bit of Isaiah in Hebrew is often translated “Woe” but here in the New Revised Standard Version, it has been rendered “Ah”. The Hebrew is hôy ; it is a negative exclamation pronounced “oy!” Perhaps the “woe” translation is better. However, the construction “woe to you . . . . ” has taken on an oracular connotation to modern ears and that is not what the prophet is saying here. He will later make prediction about these oppressors, but for now he is simply making an indictment. 
Recently, following the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, a bunch of Christian “leaders” (Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, Bryan Fisher, to name a few) have basically said, “God has been taken out of the schools,” or “God has been taken out of our society,” or some variation on this theme. This, they say is, the reason the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place. Because of God’s supposed absence (voluntary on God’s part, it would seem) the horror took place. They seek to blame those who have “put God out,” but the way they make this argument really places the responsibility on God who apparently made the decision to stay away; either that or they are describing a God who is powerless in the face of some alleged official refusal to “allow God in” because our Constitution prohibits state-prescribed sectarian prayer in the schools.
I absolutely adore Handel’s Messiah. As a child in a non-church-going family (except during the summers when I lived with my Methodist grandparents), my introduction to these words from the Prophet Isaiah was through Handel’s music. My step-father, who had sung in high school choirs, would take me with him to community sing-alongs of the oratorio which churches in our area would offer during the Christmas holidays. Even now as I read these lines from Isaiah, I read them to music of Handel! 
