The Good Shepherd discourse is divided into three sections, and we rotate through them on our three-year lectionary cycle. In this year’s section of the story, we don’t get to the part where Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd.” As you may have noticed, we only got as far as Jesus saying, “I am the gate for the sheep.” Of course, “Gate Sunday” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, and I don’t think a gate would be as cute stuck on a onesie, so I can understand why we stick to the Good Shepherd theme. 

Our dear friend Ragan once described the older liturgies in our tradition as coming from the attic of our faith. I love this image. I think about it every year at the Vigil. It’s as if once a year, we climb up to the attic, dust off the cobwebs, and bring down the box of our oldest and most cherished memories of the faith and sift through them together. 

I don’t know of anyone who has been resurrected , and excepting the final resurrection at the culmination of history, I assume that none of us plan to be. And yet, Lazarus is somewhat of an exemplar for us. The reality of our Christian hope is that we receive the grace of resurrection all the time. We get to start over every single day on the path towards righteousness. 

The people had lost faith that God was present with them in the arid, empty desert. But that same arid emptiness was all God needed to bring forth life. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating, a basic fact about our God is that where we see only death, God always offers life. There are times in our lives when this is easier to trust than others. It is good and holy when our faith does not waver. But Meribah and Massah teach us that it is also good and holy when our faith is born out of struggle and doubt. 

Shame and guilt are ideas that usually go hand in hand with penitence in the season of Lent. But Brené Brown suggests that we might need to look at repentance in a different way, and she’s not alone. Each year on Ash Wednesday we are greeted by the insuppressible faith and determination of the prophet Joel, who, as it turns out, has been speaking Brown's language all along. 

Sometimes, when I think about Moses offering the Israelites life or death, blessings or curses, I imagine him in a black tie and apron with a pen and pad waiting to take my order at a fancy restaurant. “Our specials this evening are life in which you’ll have length of days so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob; or death, in which you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. What can I get you? Life? Great. We’ll have that right out for you!”

The author of Matthew’s Gospel understood this connection the people had with the land and he used it to make a brilliant theological point. He wanted his readers to understand that Jesus was one of them, that they had the same people and were from the same place. He wanted them to see themselves in the narrative, to know that the story of Jesus was also a story about them. As Southerners, we are particularly gifted at placing ourselves in the geography of a narrative, so I think that we are poised to receive this message from the Gospel of Matthew: that the story of Jesus is also a story about us. 

Until the 1979 Prayer Book, this day was called the Feast of the Circumcision (a marketing disaster). Today we call it the Feast of the Holy Name, and every single scripture reading mentions names in some form. So I can’t help but ask, what’s in a name? Or perhaps, what’s in Jesus’ name? Jesus is actually the Greek form of the Hebrew name, “Yehoshua.” In English, both names are translated as “Joshua.” The name “Yehoshua” literally means “God is salvation,” or simply, “God saves.” This is the name that God gave to the incarnate Son through the angel Gabriel. God saves. 

Whether it’s an angel getting his wings, Santa making it all the way around the world in one night, or two lovers finding each other against all odds at the eleventh hour, I love the idea that Christmas is a time when miracles are possible and expected. The Hallmark Channel may have taken this concept to the outer reaches of the spiritual realm, but at its heart, the Christmas Miracle is based in deep and powerful theology, and its story begins even before the Incarnation of Christ. 

The word blessed is ubiquitous in our culture and can mean almost anything. This time of year, we most often hear it used in holiday well wishes. When someone tells us to “have a blessed day” or “have a blessed Thanksgiving,” we know that their hope for us is that we are safe and happy and have everything we could want on this special occasion. But is this what Zechariah means? When he cries out, with his first words in months, “blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,” is he simply sending holiday best wishes to God? How unfitting. How inadequate. How small that sentiment would be. Something else is going on here.