November 2021 – A Preacher’s Ponderings

Truth

Last Sunday after Pentecost; Christ the King; 21 November 2021; Proper 29B (RCL); 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37.

Too bad the lectionary didn’t include the next sentence in John’s Gospel. Pilate asks, “What is truth?” That’s where we seem to be as a nation; truth is contested. The Enlightenment was supposed to fix that problem. Descartes sought a kind of truth that could be deduced from first principles, and hence would not be contested. But we have discovered recently that even the logic by which truth is deduced from those first principles (indeed, even the first principles themselves) is socially constructed and conditioned.

Birthpangs

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost; 14 November 2021; Proper 28B (RCL); 1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8.

In our semi-continuous reading of the Old Testament, we now stand at the verge of the monarchy. Samuel will serve as the last of the judges and anoint two kings in succession: Saul and then David. In the deuteronomistic historiographical tradition, this will be the beginning of both the glory and the shame of Israel. Solomon will build the Temple, but also build shrines for the gods of his foreign wives. His united kingdom will reach its furthest extent, but the worship of foreign deities (and the concomitant unfaithfulness to YHWH) will sow the seeds of the nation’s destruction.

The resurrected life

All Saints’ Day (observed); 7 November 2021; All Saints’ Day, Year B (RCL); Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44.

The story of the revivification of Lazarus is a complicated one, with many details that beg questions: Why does Jesus delay for two days after hearing that Lazarus is sick? When Thomas says, “Let us also go and die with him,” who is the ‘him’ — Jesus or Lazarus? In this passage, the translators do us a disservice. Jesus is not “greatly disturbed” (twice), but in the Greek, he is indignant (twice). Why? And why is Lazarus twice called “the dead man”?