First Sunday after Christmas - C1

Year C

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

It is so easy to miss important people - parents miss children, kings miss wisdom, priests miss women.

How would you like to be repaid for someone else's gift? Those who have the power to get away with this, love it. You work - I'll take the profit!

And if you were on the other end of the game? I'll work - you take the profit. How about then?

After announcements of good-will to all we find we are back in a patriarchal setting where one benefits from another's passion and insight. Elkanah is repaid by what Hannah bore - gifts and children. And Hannah's payment is the pleasure of the bearing?

In this scheme we can justify Rachel's weeping as Herod's right. We need to ask what needs to change that we can look to a day announced, but not yet here, when elaborate justification gives way to simple justice and protection for growth.

= = = = = = =

linen ephod
swaddling clothes
a little robe

wrap round
little samuel
little jesus
little me

protecting
larval stages
transforming
priest to prophet
prophet to
the usual suspects
of me and you
and you and I
as we continue
to grow in
wisdom and stature
a favorable journey