First Reading · Isaiah
Hidden in the quiver
Where we are
The second of the four Servant Songs, and the only one spoken in the first person from beginning to end. It is addressed not to Israel but to the islands and peoples far off, and it is the passage the Church has always read on this day because its opening lines are about a vocation assigned before birth.
What happens
Hear me, O islands, listen, O distant peoples. Yahweh called me from birth, from my mother's womb he gave me my name. He made of me a sharp-edged sword and concealed me in the shadow of his arm. He made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me. You are my servant, he said to me, Israel, through whom I show my glory. Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, yet my reward is with Yahweh, my recompense is with my Theos. For now Yahweh has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb, that Jacob may be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him; and I am made glorious in the sight of Yahweh, and my Theos is now my strength. It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
What to notice
The naming happens before the birth. Mi-me'ei immi hizkir shemi — from my mother's insides he brought my name to mind — and the verb hizkir is the causative of zakhar, to remember: he caused my name to be mentioned, pronounced it aloud. It is the sentence that makes this the day's first reading, because in the Gospel a mute man will write a name on a tablet that nobody in the family has ever used.
Both weapons are described as concealed. A sharpened sword — and he hid me in the shadow of his hand; a polished arrow — and in his quiver he concealed me. The two images are of instruments finished and then put away. The arrow is bar, polished, cleaned so it will fly true; the sword is chaddah, sharp. Nothing here is unready. What the servant reports is the experience of being complete and unused, which is the experience of a man in a desert until the day of his showing.
And the middle of the song is a complaint. Ve-ani amarti le-riq yagati — I said, for emptiness I have laboured; le-tohu ve-hevel kochi khilleti, for chaos and vapour I have spent my strength. Both nouns are from the day the northern kingdom ended two readings ago: tohu, the formlessness of Genesis 1:2, and hevel, Ecclesiastes' breath. The servant's mid-career verdict on himself is that he has produced nothing at all, and the song puts it in the servant's own mouth rather than in an opponent's.
The answer to the complaint is not reassurance but enlargement. Naqal mi-hyotekha li eved — it is too slight a thing for you to be my servant merely to restore Israel. The reply to I have worked for nothing is the job you thought you had failed at was too small. The mission is widened rather than defended, and the phrase it is widened to — or goyim, a light for the nations — is the one Simeon will use over an infant in the temple.
Responsorial Psalm
Woven in the secret place
Where we are
Psalm 139 is the Psalter's great meditation on being known, and the lectionary takes its two ends: the opening claim that Theos has searched the psalmist, and the central passage about the formation of a body before anyone had seen it.
The selected verses
Psalm 139:1b-3. "Yahweh, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. My journeys and my rest you scrutinise, with all my ways you are familiar."
Psalm 139:13-14ab. "Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made."
Psalm 139:14c-15. "Wonderful are your works. My soul also you knew full well; nor was my frame unknown to you when I was made in secret, when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth."
What to notice
The first verb sets the tone and it is not gentle. Chaqartani — you have dug me out, the verb for mining, for searching a land, for investigating a legal case. Chaqar is what you do to ore and to witnesses. The psalm opens by describing divine knowledge as excavation, and only later gets to the tenderness.
The verb in Psalm 139:13 is textile. Tesukkeni be-veten immi — you wove me — or screened me, covered me over; the root sakhakh is the one behind sukkah, the booth of branches, and the covering wings of the cherubim over the ark. Being formed and being sheltered are the same verb. And Psalm 139:15 adds a second craft word, ruqqamti, I was embroidered — the term used in Exodus for the multicoloured needlework of the tabernacle curtains.
And the location given is the day's own theme. Asher usseiti va-seter — when I was made in the seter, the hiding place — the same noun the readings used on June 17 for the covert of Theos's face. Then be-tachtiyyot arets, in the depths of the earth, which is not a description of the womb but a poetic superlative for the most hidden place there is. The psalm's picture of formation is of skilled, patient, decorative work carried out somewhere nobody can watch — a quiver, in other words, with an arrow being polished inside it.
Second Reading · Acts
I am not he
Where we are
Paul is preaching in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, on the first missionary journey — the journey the readings for Barnabas described being commissioned a fortnight ago. This is his first recorded sermon, and it runs through Israel's history to David and then straight to John.
What happens
Theos raised up David as king; of him he testified, "I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will carry out my every wish." From this man's descendants Theos, according to his promise, has brought to Israel a rescuer, Jesus. John heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel; and as John was completing his course, he would say, "What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. Behold, one is coming after me; I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet." My brothers, children of the family of Abraham, and those others among you who are Theos-fearing, to us this word of rescue has been sent.
What to notice
John is given the technical vocabulary of an advance man. Prokēryxantos — having heralded beforehand — from kēryx, the herald who went ahead of an official party to announce an arrival. It is not a metaphor for preaching in general; it names a specific job with a specific relation to somebody else's schedule.
And the summary of his career is a race. Hōs de eplērou Iōannēs ton dromon — as John was filling out his course — dromos is the running track, the same noun Paul uses of himself in 2 Timothy 4:7 in the readings three weeks ago. What is being described is the last stretch, and the sentence Luke chooses to preserve from it is entirely negative.
The one line quoted is a disclaimer. Ti eme hyponoeite einai? Ouk eimi egō — what do you suppose me to be? I am not. The Greek has no complement: I am not he, with the he supplied by translators. John's summary of his own life, in the only words Acts gives him, is an unfinished negative sentence. And what follows is the sandal image — the untying of footwear being the one task a Jewish slave could not be required to perform for a master, so degrading it was excluded from the list. He says he is not qualified for the job nobody could be made to do.
Gospel · Luke
John is his name
Where we are
Nine months after the angel appeared to Zechariah in the sanctuary and he was struck dumb for asking how he could be sure. Elizabeth's child is born; the family arrives on the eighth day to circumcise and name him. The lectionary adds the single summary verse that closes Luke's infancy account of John.
What happens
When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbours and relatives heard that Yahweh had shown his great mercy toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, "No. He will be called John." But they answered her, "There is no one among your relatives who has this name." So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, "John is his name," and all were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke blessing Theos. Then fear came upon all their neighbours, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, "What, then, will this child be?" For surely the hand of Yahweh was with him. The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.
What to notice
The name is an argument. Yochanan means Yahweh has been gracious, and the relatives' objection is exactly right on its own terms: oudeis estin ek tēs syngeneias sou hos kaleitai tō onomati toutō — nobody in your kinship group is called by this name. Naming for the father or grandfather was how a family declared continuity. They are not being obtuse; they are defending a system, and the system is being set aside because this child's name is a statement about Theos rather than about a lineage.
Elizabeth's no comes first, and it is flat. Ouchi, alla klēthēsetai Iōannēs. She was not present in the sanctuary and has been given no vision in Luke's account; her husband has been unable to speak for nine months. How she knows is not explained, and she is overruled by the company, who turn to the father.
They make signs to him, which tells us something. Eneneuon tō patri autou — they gestured to Zechariah. If he were only mute, they could have spoken. The verb Luke used in Luke 1:22 is kōphos, which covers deaf as well as dumb, and this detail suggests the fuller sense. He has spent nine months unable either to hear the news or to say anything about it.
And the tablet is the hinge of the whole feast. He asks for a pinakidion, a small wax tablet, and writes four words. The Greek is Iōannēs estin onoma autou — John is his name. Not shall be, not let him be called: a present indicative, stating a fact. He is not choosing a name; he is reporting one, and the angel's word from nine months earlier is treated as already accomplished. The doubt that cost him his speech is over, and it ends in a written sentence rather than a spoken one.
The mouth opens at once, and the first use of it is not an explanation. Aneōchthē de to stoma autou parachrēma kai hē glōssa autou — his mouth and his tongue, both, immediately — kai elalei eulogōn ton theon, and he spoke, blessing Theos. The Benedictus follows in the verses the lectionary leaves for another day. The silence ends with praise rather than with an account of what happened.
The reaction is fear, and then a question. Egeneto epi pantas phobos, and then, through the whole hill country, ti ara to paidion touto estai — what then will this child be? Luke leaves it unanswered for thirty years, and closes the section with one of the strangest verses in the infancy narrative: he was in the deserts until the day of his anadeixis to Israel — the showing forth, the word for the public presentation of an official taking up his commission. Three decades in the wilderness, summarised in half a sentence, waiting to be shown.
| Reading |
The concealment |
The showing |
| Isaiah 49 |
A polished arrow, hidden in the quiver |
A light to the nations, to the ends of the earth |
| Psalm 139 |
Woven in the seter, in the depths of the earth |
I am fearfully, wonderfully made |
| Acts 13 |
A herald filling out his course |
I am not he — the whole message in a negative |
| Luke 1 |
In the deserts, for thirty years |
The day of his manifestation to Israel |
Every reading today is about something finished long before it is used.
The Church keeps three birthdays: Christ's, Mary's, and this one, and it keeps this one on the twenty-fourth of June because Luke 1:36 puts Elizabeth in her sixth month when Gabriel comes to Nazareth. The arithmetic is the calendar's only argument, and an old observation makes something of the result: John's day falls as the year's light begins to shorten, and Christmas as it begins to lengthen, which is the natural world doing what John said in one sentence — he must increase; I must decrease.
The Servant Song supplies the day's governing image, and it is a strange one for a feast. Both of the servant's descriptions are of a weapon put away: a sharpened sword hidden in the shadow of a hand, a polished arrow concealed in a quiver. Nothing about either is unfinished. What they are is unused, and the song is honest about what that feels like from the inside — I have laboured for emptiness, I have spent my strength on vapour — using the two Hebrew words for nothingness that the readings met a few days ago at the fall of Samaria. The reply is not consolation. It is an enlargement of the assignment.
Psalm 139 puts the same idea in the body's own terms, and its verbs are all trades: woven, with the root behind the booth of branches and the sheltering wings over the ark; embroidered, the word for the coloured needlework of the tabernacle curtains. And the workshop is named twice — in the secret place, and in the depths of the earth. What is being described is careful, decorative, unhurried craftsmanship carried out where nobody can watch it, which is the psalm's answer to the servant's complaint before the servant makes it.
Then the two New Testament readings show what the arrow was for, and both of them are astonishingly self-effacing. Acts preserves exactly one sentence from the whole of John's preaching, and it is I am not he — an incomplete negative, followed by a disclaimer about sandals that names the one duty a slave could not be compelled to perform. And Luke's account of the birth turns on four words scratched on a wax tablet by a man who has not spoken for nine months: John is his name, present tense, reporting rather than choosing. The relatives object that nobody in the family is called that, and they are correct — which is the point, because the name is not about the family. Yochanan: Yahweh has been gracious. The child is named after what Theos did, and then put in the desert for thirty years until the day he was shown.
A Question to Sit With
The arrow was finished, polished and correct, and it stayed in the quiver — and the servant's own account of that period is that he had spent his
strength on nothing. Thirty years in the desert produced one summary verse. That is the pattern the feast celebrates, and it is not a comfortable one, because from inside the quiver there is no way to distinguish
being prepared from being shelved. Where am I in that stretch now, and what would it change to take the song's word for it — that the
reward is held elsewhere and the assignment is
more likely to be enlarged than withdrawn? And the other question the day puts, which is quieter: Zechariah's nine months of silence ended in four written words that claimed nothing for himself and stated what
Theos had done.
If I had one sentence to be remembered by, would it need a predicate at all?