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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 261

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

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II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

261

Justifying Christmas
L e a d e r ’ s

Quotations marked AE are from Luther’s Works, American Edition
(56 vols; St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House and Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1955–86).

G u i d e

Quotations marked WA are from the Weimar Ausgabe (“edition”)
of Luther’s Works. Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. 65 vols.
Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883–1993.

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Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible® (The Holy Bible, English
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reserved.

can find brief introductions to the prophet and his historical
setting in our study Bibles.
Isaiah is the prophet quoted most frequently in the New
Testament,3 so many of us are familiar with certain passages
from his writings. What do we remember of the career of
this eighth-century B.C. prophet? Horace Hummel provides
the following one-sentence summary of Isaiah’s career:

Justifying Christmas
L e a d e r ’ s

Isaiah lived through, witnessed, and commented on
one of the major turning points in Israel’s history—
from the halcyon days of empire and independence
under Uzziah through the fall of Samaria and the
semi-escape of Judah only by accepting colonial
status under the relentless pressure of the Assyrian
colossus.4

G u i d e

Session 1: Is. 64:1-9
Introduction to the Bible study series
“Justifying Christmas”: that’s the title that has been chosen
for this Bible study series. What thoughts and expectations
come to mind when you hear it? Most of us probably begin
running through a mental list of the various apologetic
questions and challenges we Christians face every year as
the celebration of our Savior’s birth approaches — “How
can you justify spending so much money on gifts when so
many people have nothing?” “How can you justify incorporating Santa Claus into your family traditions?” “How
can you justify celebrating Jesus’ birth during an originally
pagan festival?” And the list goes on and on.
That, however, is not what this Bible study will be about.
“Justifying Christmas” will not help us learn new and clever
ways to justify what we do every December; rather, it will
help us see how the Scriptures connected with the birth
of Jesus proclaim the good news of justification by grace
through faith. In other words, we’ll be studying how Christmas justifies us as part of God’s gracious work in Christ
Jesus to justify sinners. And if that’s what the Advent and
Christmas Scriptures are proclaiming, then we will better see how everything we do at this time of year — our
readings and songs, our worship gatherings and family
gatherings, our customs and traditions — is or should be
a celebration of how “God, to whom man can find no way,
has in Christ (the hidden center of the Old Testament and
the manifested center of the New) creatively opened up the
way which man may and must go.”1
Martin Franzmann, Seven Theses on Reformation Hermeneutics: A Report
of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (St. Louis: The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod, 1969), 4. Franzmann added an explanatory footnote to

Chapters 56–66 are not an awkward addendum to
Isaiah, but the culmination of the book’s overall message. They must be interpreted as an integral part of
the original book of Isaiah and not as an independent literary work that is only marginally connected
with chapters 1–55. The inspired book is divinely
intended to be read as a whole.7

With respect to Isaiah 64, three brief introductory points
should be made here:

[If part or all of the above is used in the announcement of
an invitation to the Bible study, the instructor need only
briefly review this series introduction for the class at the
first session.]

Introduction to Session 1: Is. 64:1–9
There is a little lectionary irony in the fact that this “500th
Christmas since the Reformation” should fall during Year
B of our three-year lectionary, the year “devoted to” the
Gospel according to Mark. Mark offers us no account of the
birth of our Lord. For the purposes of our study, however,
this is a blessing in disguise, for this forces us to consider a
variety of texts rather than focus on one (familiar) longer
narrative. And this year we have what is easily the most
urgent and demanding of Advent beginnings in the almost
desperate plea of Isaiah that God would burst the heavens
and come down.2
Isaiah 64:1–9 will likely raise many questions for the participants of this study (and hopefully even more by the end of
the hour), but we will let our series theme provide the focus
and control the boundaries of our discussion in this Bible
study. Still, some introduction to the passage is required,
especially if the class is not familiar with Old Testament history. The instructor will be the best judge of just how much
introduction is needed, but both instructor and students
his summary statement of “radical gospel,” which reads, “To avoid any possible
misunderstanding, it may be noted that ‘may’ signifies ‘is permitted and enabled by
God’ and ‘must’ indicates that there is no second way.”
The Old Testament Reading for the First Sunday of Advent, Year B, is Is. 64:1-9.
Cf. Year A is Is. 2:1-5 (“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord”) and Year
C is Jer. 33:14-16 (“I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David”).

Justifying Christmas — Leader’s Guide |

whole. Students may be familiar with critical approaches
that divide the book of Isaiah (and even the person of
Isaiah) into first, second, third and so on; however, Oswalt
reports that “the idea of several independent books of
Isaiah is in the eclipse.”6 The instructor is referred to the
very helpful section of Reed Lessing’s introduction, which
provides a detailed argument as to why such segmented
approaches should be “eclipsed” by a more careful and
congenial reading of the whole book. His section “The
Relationship between Isaiah 40–55 and Isaiah 56–66”
concludes,

1. It is very difficult to determine the historical setting of
Isaiah 64. In his brief “Excursus: The Historical Setting of
63:15-19,” John Oswalt describes the challenges of determining that historical setting (including that of subsequent
chapters) and the problems this difficulty has led to in the
history of the interpretation of this section of Isaiah. Oswalt
shows that the evidence is inadequate to support any of the
“creative” theories proposed and adds,
This [passage] is a cry that would have particular poignancy in the light of the deliverance from
Babylon, but the theological necessity of such action
was as clear in the prophet’s own day as it would be
in any coming day. There is no justification for an
attempt to interpret the perennial message of this
passage on the basis of a hypothetical historical setting that is neither explicit nor implicit in the book,
and that is not supported by any historical source.5
If the theological issues and necessities that Isaiah
addressed are still facing us today, we need to hear the
prophet as much as his original audience(s) did.
2. Although Isaiah’s vision is far-reaching in both time
and space, his book is intended to be read as a unified
3
John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 1–39, New International
Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 3.

Horace D. Hummel, The Word Becoming Flesh: An Introduction to the Origin,
Purpose, and Meaning of the Old Testament (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing
House, 1979), 191.

John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40–66, New International
Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 617.

In response to such unsupported theories of multiple authorship during distinct periods of history, Oswalt argues,
It is an easier supposition to imagine one author
who receives a theological vision so large that it must
be extended out beyond his own time and place to
encompass other times and places whose details he
can only dimly perceive and that are significant only
insofar as they provide backdrops for the theological
issues being addressed.8
3. Righteousness is one of the main themes that
unites the book of Isaiah into a literary unity. One of
the two main themes that Lessing uses to show the unity
of the whole book of Isaiah is that of righteousness, the
very theme we need to focus on. Pages 12–15 of Lessing’s
introduction provide invaluable introductory material
for this study as well as for anyone interested in reading
Isaiah as a unified text. Lessing notes that instances of
the ‫צְדָקָה‬/‫( צֶדֶק‬ṣedeq/ṣədāqâ),9 or “righteousness” word
group, appear 81 times in the book and “bind together all
sixty-six chapters.”10

Oswalt, 40–66, 4.

R. Reed Lessing, Isaiah 56–66, Concordia Commentary (St. Louis: Concordia
Publishing House, 2014), 20.

Oswalt, 40–66, 452 footnote 23.

The study follows the Hebrew transliteration convention (Academic style) presented
in The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), 56–57.

Lessing, Isaiah 56-66, 12–13.

4 | Justifying Christmas — Leader’s Guide

2019 Convention Workbook