Isaiah 9: Peculiarly God’s Own
Sunday, June 29, 2025
We are accustomed to hearing this beautiful anthem at Advent and so these words feel odd to us in the northern hemisphere who experience Christmas in the cold and dark. We are accustomed to frosty, long nights rather than warm, short ones when we think about God’s coming to live among us. The people who walked in darkness cry out for light. Isaiah’s people are lonely and afraid as they try to ride out the terms of their exile. Today’s words must have felt astonishing to them, yet welcome. These people who were accustomed to neglect and abuse must have felt a fluttering image come into focus of the life they had been promised. The words we read in Isaiah today may even have taken them back to earlier words of promise in Deuteronomy that we heard in the first reading at Mass today (Deuteronomy 7:6-11): Moses said to the people: “You are a people sacred to the Lord, your God; he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be a people peculiarly his own. It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you are really the smallest of all nations. It was because the Lord loved you and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn to your fathers, that he brought you out with his strong hand from the place of slavery, and ransomed you . . .” This small nation, these insignificant people are lifted up and redeemed by a God-hero. Amazing words and deeds.
These words from today’s second reading (1 John 4:7-16) confirm our best hope: In this way the love of God was revealed to us: he sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God loves us, so we also must love one another. We who are oppressed or lost, we who are abandoned are redeemed and brought back by a Wonder-Counselor. Amazing words and deeds.
We hear welcome words from Jesus in today’s Gospel (Matthew 11:25-30): Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.
This oppressed people, these burdened people are healed and transformed by a Prince of Peace. Amazing words and deeds.
Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Prince of Peace . . . and yet this one is meek and humble and willing to take on so much that is not his to take. This is the God who walks among us as one of us. This is the one who can exert all power over all things and all people yet he stoops to us in humility and meekness because this is how much he loves us. Amazing and wonderful that we are peculiarly God’s own.
Image from: https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20060424_rainbow
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