🦁 5th day of Christmas
Readings: Psalm 148; Isaiah 49:5-15; Matthew 12:46-50.
From the TRNG Room:
Reflection
Good morning and welcome to the fifth day of Advent. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Psalm 148, Isaiah 49, and Matthew 12. And the language of family kind of sticks out, and, you know, the Isaiah reading was long, but it closes with this really, you know, important reminder.
In Isaiah, there's a narrator. I don't know if it's Isaiah himself who's like, you know, I'm going to be forgotten. And Zion, which is kind of a, I don't want to say code word like conspiracy theorists, but like it is a coded word for Jerusalem, for Israel as the people of God. And they're saying, the Lord has forgotten me.
He's forsaken me. And the last verse, can a woman forget her nursing child? Can God forget Israel that easily that she has no compassion? And God reminds the narrator that God will not forget Zion. This image is used as a familial family image. And the gospel reading we have the,, the individual asked him, you know, who are my neighbors?
Who's my mother, my brother, and Jesus uses but also challenges the familial language. My mother, my brother, my sister, my father are not necessarily just my biological father and mother and brother and sister, but everyone who does the will of my father in heaven. Essentially suggesting that the people of God are a family unit.
And that's a really central metaphor in the Bible. And it's one of the reasons that, for me, when I talk about, you know, the military or like the troops or something, I don't like using the troops because it's just maddeningly unspecific and kind of homogenizing. But another reason I like expanding, or I, Another reason is that I like expanding the definition of military outside of just active duty or reserves, but includes the veteran community, including their dependents, their children, and their spouses.
And quite frankly, I think the military includes, you know, any service that supports running an organization or nation. And isn't just about force, but you know, force is on the table. So like police and law enforcement, firefighting, emergency medical services not just, you know, armed service branches, but any kind of structured organization and personnel that contribute toward the stability, the justice, the peace of a nation, you know, the force service, the AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, like that to me is.
a more inclusive or to include them in the military as a more inclusive kind of definition, I think is important. It's a reminder that we kind of, we love putting things in boxes and then sometimes those boxes don't, don't work, don't fit. aNd in particular, military families are a part of the military community.
You know, Spouses deploy and leave children and their partners, at home. And the family that remains at home is making a sacrifice. In nearly every bit as, as the service member is children doing without a parent for six months, a year, a year and a half that is a sacrifice that supports the stability and peace of our country.
anD so dependents are, are sometimes this overlooked element within the military. And to, to point out as I often do, Jesus, if God is a warrior, according to Exodus 15 Jesus as the son of God is a military brat and Mary is a military spouse. I also point out in a recent blog post that in each of their initial addresses, Mary's magnificat in Luke one and Jesus's inaugural sermon in Luke four, I think.
They both cite Isaiah 61, including Isaiah 59 in the armor of God and binding up the oppressed and or loosening the, the chains of the in Jesus' language. It's the eike matos, the prisoners of war. Someone taken by a spear eich me. So Jesus. And in, when Mary's opening lines of the Magnifica my soul magnifies the Lord.
My, my. My, my, I exalt my God, something like that. It's quoting another verse from Isaiah 61 and changing it slightly. And again, Isaiah 61, when it's talking about, you know, a child will lead them and da, da, da, da, like this is military languages, quoting Zebulon and Naphtali, the lands that lie in darkness, who are the troop tribes of Israel that have been disgraced before Israel.
aNd so this language not only is inclusive of military dependence it, the opening speeches of the Holy Family. Emphasize that they are military dependents going on a military mission or preparing a military campaign in which God in Christ wages war on sin and evil. And so military families are part and parcel to the military.
You know, understanding or being unashamed of the military imagery in scripture is essential for understanding the mission of Jesus on earth and the work of salvation by God throughout history. If we don't get that, and we don't know how to recognize it, and we don't include military families in that narrative, we are not getting the full picture.
If we think of, you know, if we honor, quote-unquote, the troops, but we do nothing for the wives and children that die. We're, you know, do this pithy little jack-wad, you know, platitudes. We're not really getting the full picture. aNd I think that's to our own discredit as a church and not to families themselves.
I'll put in the show link or the show notes, a link to some articles on the training room about military dependence that point out Jesus and Mary's inaugurals and how they use military language. And this isn't to venerate soldiers, veterans, and military families, but to be honest and realistic about their role in salvation history because we often either overlook it or overstate it.
And I think there's a middle ground that we need to be. aware of and to explore and to enrich our own understanding of God and God's work in the world, we have to come to terms with the fact that military language and families are integral to not just the Gospels, but the entire biblical witness.
