The First Sunday of Christmas Year B

The First Sunday of Christmas
Isaiah 61.10—62.3
Galatians 4.4–7
Luke 2.15–21

God sent the Son...and God sent the Spirit of the Son. St Paul brings together Christmas and Pentecost – as unlikely a pair, to our culture-conditioned minds, as plum pudding and a May Bank Holiday. Son and Spirit remain inseparable. Ask Mary.

Paul is describing how slaves become God’s adopted children and heirs. Telling, as so often, a fresh variation on the story of the Exodus, he sees the law itself as the instrument of slavery. It locked up the Jews in condemnation; it locked out the Gentiles from membership...

Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year B by N T Wright