Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 18, 2001

The prophet Jere­mi­ah com­posed the words of hope that we read today in the dark moment of the Baby­lon­ian con­quest of Jerusalem.  That was in the ear­ly 6^th cen­tu­ry before Christ. He was look­ing for­ward to a time when the peo­ple of Judah would be restored in their home­land and ruled by a real king, not a pup­pet of an alien empire. After fifty years, some of the Judean refugees did indeed return under the Per­sians, but Gov­er­nor Zerub­ba­bel was not allowed to act as a sov­er­eign, as a full-fledged king. Nor did such a monar­chy devel­op under the Greeks or, lat­er, under the Romans. Writ­ings like the book of Daniel show us that, even though they had been restored, in a sense, and had even rebuilt their tem­ple, the peo­ple of Judea were still in a kind of exile, from which they longed to be released. The hope expressed in Jere­mi­ah’s vision (and also in those of Isa­iah and Ezekiel) grew to be a hope for an Anoint­ed One who would pre­side over a New Age expe­ri­enc­ing the Reign of God in a fresh way.

Even­tu­al­ly, after the first East­er, the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty saw Jere­mi­ah’s prophe­cy ful­filled in Jesus - not, of course, as a sec­u­lar king but as the viceroy of the king­dom of God, which has no embassies in the cap­i­tals of the world.

As I write this reflec­tion at the south­ern edge of Jerusalem, the con­tem­po­rary town of Beth­le­hem, now real­ly a city, is vis­i­ble through my win­dow. Just to the east sits the check­point where young mem­bers of the Israel Defense Forces, Uzzies hung from their shoul­ders, halt and refuse or per­mit, as the case may be, those who would enter or leave the birth­place of the Prince of Peace. In this set­ting, the words of Jere­mi­ah have a spe­cial poignan­cy: “In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell secure­ly.” For Jere­mi­ah, Israel and Judah were two ways of nam­ing the same peo­ple. Those words have a dif­fer­ent res­o­nance now, when Israel names a mod­ern state cre­at­ed in 1948 and cov­ers half of geo­graph­i­cal Pales­tine, and what was Judah in the 6^th cen­tu­ry is now part­ly Israel and part­ly the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry of the West bank.  For the Pales­tin­ian major­i­ty now liv­ing in what was much of old Judah, “sal­va­tion” would be free­dom from for­eign occu­pa­tion, and the grow­ing incur­sion of alien set­tlers. And for most Israelis, “secu­ri­ty,” obvi­ous­ly, is the goal that dri­ves their efforts to expand the ter­ri­to­ry around the state of Israel. Secu­ri­ty and sal­va­tion, in the way that Jere­mi­ah prob­a­bly under­stood these things have still not arrived for Israel and Judah. What is a Chris­t­ian to make of this? We claim that Jesus is that branch of David who brings peace and justice.

Let’s turn to the Gospel read­ing the annun­ci­a­tion of Jesus’ con­cep­tion to Joseph.  Lis­ten to a sen­tence rarely not­ed in this pas­sage. In this dream vision, the angel of the Lord says to Joseph: “She [Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his peo­ple from their sins.” The name Jesus, the Greek form of the famil­iar Hebrew name Joshua (or Yehoshua) does lit­er­al­ly mean, “YHWH saves.” The ordi­nary Hebrew way of under­stand­ing that would be, “God saves from sick­ness and ene­mies.” Think­ing about that helps us real­ize the amaz­ing new thing con­tained in the promise that the child in Mary’s womb will “save his peo­ple FROM THEIR SINS.”

Well, all of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, one way or anoth­er, is our effort to under­stand how Jesus saves his peo­ple from their sins. Accord­ing to the rest of Matthew’s Gospel, that sav­ing from sins begins after the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus opens the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a new way of being human, by con­ver­sion to the Reign of God, allow­ing God to heal our lone­li­ness, fear, greed, and vio­lence so that we can live not from spon­ta­neous human self­ish­ness but by the pow­er of his spir­it in the kind of com­mu­ni­ty life sum­ma­rized in the Ser­mon on the Mount. An impos­si­ble dream? That’s the mes­sage of Matthew. That’s the teach­ing of Jesus. It’s meant to hap­pen, by the grace of God, and our response.

The Israel/Palestine of today is still a micro­cosm of the world. We will con­tin­ue to need Advent to remind us that the world will remain in a very real exile until enough of us allow our­selves to be con­vert­ed to the Reign of God and live lives that reflect the jus­tice that is nec­es­sary for peace. That is more than Jere­mi­ah could hope for. It is what Jesus promised and makes pos­si­ble. It still seems a dis­tant hope. It is a good thing the life of our faith com­mu­ni­ties some­times allows us to taste it along the way, in our prayer and in our action.