| December 8, 2000 Genesis 3:9-15 + Ephesians 3:1-6,11-12 + Luke 1:26-38 |
| Back to the Book of Beginnings we go to understand and to affirm what we have come to know and believe. The Immaculate Conception takes us back to our beginnings – deep into the plan of the Creating God who still makes all things new, who still chooses to redeem, who still insists on remaining with us to enjoy I suppose what is good. Today my friends, we can step out of the routine of a December Friday and celebrate what is good, remember that we are not left alone to our own destruction, and continue to bind ourselves to that saving, loving, redeeming God in the Covenant he has offered freely offered us and prepared for us from the Beginning. |
| Now take those Old Testament facts and put them against what we celebrate today and view them with the experience we treasure in the life and stories of Mary. We are celebrating today the Promise of Salvation. We are confirming the free choice of God who has chosen |
| Once the theme is understood, it is possible then to see how the author shows us the story of God’s care, God’s plan, for these special people to be the first citizens of His kingdom and the source of God’s revelation. |
| So, three themes emerge: 1) Promise of salvation, 2) free choice of those through whom the promises would be fulfilled, 3) and lastly, the way which these promises will be brought to realization – through covenants between God and man. |
| Today is a good day to follow their example, and so the church leads us to Genesis, the “Beginning Book” that unfolds for us the story of God’s intentions. It is a book that begins with the first woman and man in paradise and ends with the twelve sons of Jacob in Egypt. The ending is as significant as the beginning. It shows what the author has been leading up to: an explanation of where these twelve sons, the immediate forefathers of the Israelite people came from. The main theme of the book then is the origin of the Israelite people. |
| The earliest church, its leaders and its inspired writers turned to the Bible they knew when they wanted to understand what God was doing, saying, and revealing to them in the course of their experience with Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible they knew was the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Law which comes out of the first five books called the Pentateuch. |
| At the same time, the Book of Genesis shows how mankind after the fall and the promise of ultimate triumph gradually deteriorates when left to itself without God’s help; how god began to fulfill his promise of triumph over the forces of Satan by setting aside one family through whom salvation would come in a new covenant; and how this covenant would be made only with those God freely and independently chooses – not by inheritance or birth order those through whom the promises will be kept, not necessarily those expected because of their birth right or birth order; and we affirm by the covenant in Jesus Christ, that salvation is at hand. |