3C19. Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10. The Law or the Torah was God’s way of making the Hebrews into his faithful Chosen People. The faithful practice of the Law was to unite them together as one people belonging to the one God. Ezra the priest was speaking to the people as God’s representative. He told that rejoicing in the Lord must be their strength. That must be our strength too.

Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21. Luke, the evangelist, writes to his readers as though writing to one person named Theophilus, which means in Greek “one who loves God’. “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.” As the human aspect of Jesus was given over to the power of the Spirit so should we be daily, following the example of Jesus. As Ezra read the Scriptures to the people, so does Jesus. Jesus reads from Isaiah 6:1-2 what Isaiah had written regarding the restoration of God’s people to their land but now applies this passage to his ministry to establish a new People of God as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Jesus says to those in the synagogue, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

1 Corinthians 12:12-30. “We were all given to drink of one Spirit,” since the many members of the church, using our many Spirit-given gifts for the benefit of the whole body of the church make us one body with Christ as the head, as did the Law make the Hebrews one in God. As Ezra proclaimed the Law of the Lord to unite the people as one people in God, so too Jesus proclaimed the fulfillment of the Old Testament in his Person and ministry to create a one, new people of God. It would seem that Paul wrote this section to address problems in the Corinthian community where there may not have been adequate respect for the spiritual gifts that others had received and /or some members were claiming that their gifts were superior to others thus creating dissension and disunity, thus offending the unity that God’s Church must have.