000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

Second Sunday after the Epiphany/Year A 17
Christians particularly in wars that they declared either just or holy, such
as the Crusades or the wars of religion from 1618 to 1648. But God’s justice
is justice on behalf of God’s children; it is like a mother whose love
for her children leads her to seek justice for them. It is the justice of
YHWH’s tender love.
At the same time, this is a justice for absolutely everybody. It is justice
“to the nations” and “justice in the earth and the coastlands” (vv. 1, 4). All
nations and peoples belong to the Lord (Ps. 82:8).
Verses 5–7 are a self-disclosure on God’s part. God is the Lord who created
heaven and earth and gives life (breath) and wisdom (spirit) to all
people; God is the Lord who called Israel, took Israel by the hand, and
kept Israel, who gives Israel “as a covenant to the peoples, a light to the
nations.” The covenant is never for Israel alone; it is to be shared with the
Gentiles. Neither is it for Christians alone, as the church’s displacement
theology so long asserted. God’s justice heals the sick and frees prisoners
(v. 7). God does not give God’s glory to idols (v. 8).
This is the task that Matthew envisaged Jesus as carrying out even in
infancy, that Jesus assumed in reading this passage in the synagogue in
Nazareth (Luke 4:16–21), and that Paul took on himself, all in continuity
with Isaiah. It is our task as well.
Second Sunday after the Epiphany/Year A
Isaiah 49:1–7
Today’s reading continues the theme of the universal salvation of the peoples
of the world, Jews and Gentiles: “I will give you as a light to the
nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (v. 6). The
theme is presented in the first verse: “Listen to me, O coastlands, pay
attention, you peoples from far away!” God often called upon Israel to
“hear!” but now God claims the attention of Gentiles. Our passage sings
the gracious news of the all-inclusive love of God. God loves Israel as the
apple of God’s eye, but God has always intended that the descendants of
Abraham and Sarah be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth and that
they should be a blessing to each other and to Israel. “All the nations of
the earth” were blessed in Abraham (Gen. 18:18).
The servant says of himself: “The LORD called me before I was born,
while I was in my mother’s womb he named me” (49:1). Jeremiah says the
same and adds: “I appointed you a prophet to the nations [Gentiles]” (1:5).
Paul says of himself: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was