Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Monday, December 20, 2021
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Jesus is for everyone. Yes, he would be born of and raised by devout Jews. But from the very beginning, people from other nations recognized that he was special—the subject of prophecies and astrological texts. As Jesus ministry unfolded and he sometimes struggled with whether his message was for non-Jews, he continued to cross boundaries, extending God’s love to gentiles—a Syrophoenician woman, a Samaritan woman, a Roman centurion. Maybe his parents told him the story of how the wise men visited when he was a toddler. Maybe, being precocious, he actually remembered it, even if he had no understanding of it at the time. Perhaps he knew that he was always destined to carry God’s message well beyond the small community that had held it for so long. In God’s eyes, no one is an outsider. Period. The wise men remind us of that.
Do I ever feel like an outsider in my faith circles?