11/27/2023

Begin Again: Closure and Anticipation: Lectionary Preview December 2023, Luke 1-2, Year B

by Rev. Dr. Neal Presa

A war still rages in Ukraine. Survivors in flooded Libya and earthquake-shaken Morocco are literally picking up pieces of whatever remnants of home can still be found, mourning loved ones, and figuring out what the future might be. Weapons of bullets and of words blanket our body politic, threats to democracy loom as we in the United States head into what promises to be a tumultuous 2024 election. Racism persists, gender injustice and violence continues, socioeconomic disparities widen, relationships fracture, death and its shadow are ubiquitous. Such is the real plight of our existence, of 2023, of 2024, no matter what year or season it is.

God, help us.

These brief snippets belie our collective sense of wearied souls, worn-out hearts, a desire for deliverance, groans for justice, plaintive cries for help, bewilderment, anxiety, wrenching pain, laughter (not of joy) that is actually belting out palpable weeping because all is not well. This is not gloom and doom, but reality. I have read on social media among ministry colleagues, family, friends all over the world, and complete strangers who are all expressing a deep desire to turn the page. Like hurricane-force winds, this year, like any year, has been another downpour of unrelenting upheaval to our collective experience, a reckoning with the truth if we paid any attention. Let’s enter this Advent season, not with the utopia that bobbing reindeer on the front lawn nor the glittering lights seem to announce; rather let’s regard this Advent season as the Gospel narratives describe Jerusalem in the first century C.E., as did the psalmists, with soberness, circumspectly, with humble anticipation but an eagerness of God’s promises because of hearts and souls desirous for deliverance. While nicely, neatly wrapped gifts will still find their places under Christmas trees, this year 2023 calls for an Advent and Christmas celebrations that ought not to be same old-same old. Many of the realities underlying the political, social, racial, cultural, historical, natural, and climatological unrest that we have experienced have been here for a very long time; these are not new.

These previews for the December 2023 lectionary texts see a dual combination of desire of God’s people separated by centuries but longing for closure to one set of realities in hopes of anticipating what awaits in the future while still grappling with the present. As people of faith who serve communities of faith and who also serve people with no faith or whose faith has been deeply challenged in these times, we all sense a need, a desire to begin again. In Eddie Glaude Jr.’s bestseller, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own (New York: Crown, 2020), Glaude shared how the title of his book borrowed from a passage of the last novel of the late African American author James Baldwin who averred how to survive and find the strength to fight for justice even when things appear to be desperate and lost:

When the dream was slaughtered and all that love and labor seemed to have come to nothing, we scattered. . . . We knew where we had been, what we had tried to do, who had cracked, gone mad, died, or been murdered around us. Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.[1]

Let us receive and embrace the promise of Advent and Christmas which our faith confesses and which we pray and sing. As we close out this year and look to the next, empowered by the Spirit of Christ, to begin again. Amen.

December 10
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
Mark:1-8
December 17
Psalm 126
John 1:6-8, 19-28
December 24
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
Luke 1:26-38
December 24 & 25
Psalm 98
John 1:1-14
December 31
Psalm 148
Luke 2:22-40

[1] James Baldwin, Just Above My Head in Eddie Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons For Our Own (New York: Crown, 2020), p. xxix.

Rev. Dr. Neal Presa

Rev. Dr. Neal Presa

The Rev. Neal D. Presa, Ph.D. is Executive Presbyter of the Presbytery of San José. He also serves as Affiliate Associate Professor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Senior Fellow of The Center for Pastor Theologians. He is past chair (2020-2022) and vice chair (2018-2020) of the Board of Trustees of the Presbyterian Foundation. He served as Moderator of the 220th General Assembly (2012-2014), and he currently represents the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on the World Council of Churches Central Committee and Executive Committee, where he is moderator of the finance policy committee. He is moderator of the Theology Working Group for the World Communion of Reformed Churches’ 27th General Council (2025, Chiang Mai). He is author/(co-)editor of nine books and over 100 essays, journal articles, and book reviews, including the recent Worship, Justice, and Joy: A Liturgical Pilgrimage (Cascade, 2025), as part of the Worship & Witness series in partnership with the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship and with funding from the Louisville Institute. For two decades he served congregations in New Jersey and California, and as a senior administrative faculty and visiting professor/research fellow in theological institutions in the United States, Philippines, and South Africa. He is married to Grace née Rhie (a publisher of English books on Korean subjects) and they have two college age sons. Connect with Neal on social media @NealPresa or email Neal@sanjosepby.org.

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