Random Thoughts: Another Take on the Shepherds' Fear

A thought that belongs in a different sermon than the one I wrote this week:

When the angel appears to the shepherds in Luke 2, it says, "The Lord's glory shone around them, and they were terrified." The traditional (and most obvious) interpretation of this is that God's glory was so overwhelming that they were afraid until the angel spoke to them.

Sermon: "Holiness", Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-10, 13-15, 17-18 (October 25, 2020)

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You may be wondering what the deal is with our scripture reading for today. I’ve done a bit of a “cut-and-paste” job on it, but there’s a reason for that. The Lectionary itself only gives us the first two and last four verses of this section, and I didn’t like how much that excluded. But I didn’t want to tackle 18 whole verses in one week; I had to cut SOMETHING out. So, since this passage is essentially a list of rules, I decided to cut out the ones that we’re already very familiar with (those covered in the Ten Commandments) and the ones that really aren’t relevant to today’s society (laws regarding animal sacrifice, which stopped in 70 CE). That left me with what we have before us this morning.