Isaiah 61:10–62:3

The Thrill of Hope

Lectionary Date: December 31, 2023 [1st Sunday after Christmas, Year B]

Welcome to the First Reading Christmas Party! All four hosts are together for a jam-packed conversation around this week’s first reading.

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First Reading is an audio podcast to help you preach with confidence from the Hebrew Bible. We equip you with relevant linguistic, historical, and literary background for each week’s Old Testament lesson (the “first reading”) as scheduled in the Revised Common Lectionary. With help from our guests—some of the best thinkers and teachers in modern biblical scholarship—each episode probes some of the central questions raised by the text, and offers a couple potential angles for preaching it.

We want to see a community of clergy and congregations who have formative access to both testaments of Scripture. Our hope is that this weekly resource can help encourage more preachers to craft sermons that open up the Old Testament to their congregations!