Category: Lectionary

5 April 2015
Easter Sunday
Easter Day B (RCL)
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18

If you’re like me, you have trouble believing on their face accounts of a resurrected body of Jesus appearing to the disciples the second day after his death. I had a professor in college who used to ask, “If you had been there with a video camera, what would it have recorded?” He himself believed it would have recorded the glorified body of Jesus emerging from the tomb. I was never so sure (beyond just the fictitious nature of the question – nowadays people would use their cell phone). I think John’s Gospel throws us a little hint in this passage. After the two disciples (Peter and the other disciple) get into a foot race to the tomb, and both take their turn looking into the tomb, John tells us, “for they did not yet understand the scriptures that he must rise from the dead.” Perceiving the resurrection is a matter of understanding the scriptures. Continue reading “Toward the resurrection”

29 March 2015
Palm/Passion Sunday
Palm Sunday B (RCL)
Mark 11:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark 14:1 — 15:47

We don’t often read large chunks of scripture liturgically. We usually chop it up into little bits of a few verses at a stretch. This is one of the few Sundays when we read two chapters in course. And, the chapters we read are at the heart of the Christian myth. It is a story we are all familiar with, at least cursorily. But reading Mark’s Passion reminds me how little we know about the whole story. There are all kinds of little, puzzling details that seem to obtrude into the story. Continue reading “Talking about the Passion”

22 March 2015
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Lent 5B (RCL)
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-13
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

John is too good a story teller to be careless. But this week’s reading presents us with a puzzle: do the Greeks ever see Jesus? In the story of the woman at the well, Jesus asks for a drink of water, and by the end of the story, she abandons her water jar at the well. John is telling us that she has indeed met Jesus and drunk of his living water. Here, the Greeks appear in the story, and simply disappear from the narrative. However, all the way along the story so far, John has been teasing us with the idea of Jesus’ “hour,” which until now has not yet come. The appearance of certain Greeks signifies the arrival of Jesus’ hour. Their disappearance leaves us pondering the nature of Jesus’ hour. It is the hour of his glorification, and a too-simple reading would connect it only with Jesus’ death on the cross. Continue reading “What needs to die?”

15 March 2015
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Lent 4B (RCL)
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

This passage in Numbers is an odd little story. Yet again the people are grumbling, and God sends fiery serpents among them. The word in Hebrew for the serpents is “seraph,” just like the seraphim whom Isaiah sees in the Temple. As such, the seraphim are emblems of God’s holiness. The word in the Septuagint is “ophis,” which corresponds to the serpent in the temptation story (this connection, alas, doesn’t exist in Hebrew). John, in writing his Gospel, would have been reading the Septuagint. John uses “ophis” in this passage from his Gospel.

Whether the connection is to temptation/sin or to holiness, the people in the wilderness grumble, and God sends fiery serpents among them, who bite them. Continue reading “Snake bit”

8 March 2015
Third Sunday in Lent
Lent 3B (RCL)
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

The “temple act” of Jesus seems to me one of the most historically probably events in the New Testament record. Such an act would have certainly called the attention of the Roman authorities to whoever performed it. It seems likely to have led to a swift punishment. The synoptic Gospels connect it with Jesus’ death. John, oddly, moves it to the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Since John’s readers would have likely been familiar with at least one other Gospel, John wants us to notice this difference. John also connects it with the sign of changing water into wine (the authorities ask Jesus what sign he can give for the authority to perform the act, and John has just told us that the water-to-wine was the beginning of Jesus’ signs).

John foreshadows Jesus’ resurrection by telling us the disciples remembered and interpreted Jesus’ words about the temple of his body after his resurrection. Continue reading “Living in the presence of God”

15 February 2015
Last Sunday after Epiphany
Last Epiphany B (RCL)
2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

I have often heard (and probably preached) sermons about the transfiguration being in the lectionary on the last Sunday before Lent as a way of giving us a glimpse of what is to come, and steeling us for the journey ahead. The collect for the day certainly points in that direction. I think, instead, the transfiguration stands at the center of Mark’s Gospel as a way of interpreting the two halves of his narrative: the first half shows Jesus as the man of power, announcing God’s kingdom, and the second half shows Jesus as the victim of the plot against his life. The transfiguration is the hinge. Continue reading “Back to the beginning”

8 February 2015
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Epiphany 5B (RCL)
Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

In this short little passage from Mark’s Gospel (10 verses), three distinct actions take place. Mark is nothing if not urgent. Immediately after leaving the synagogue, Jesus and his four disciples enter Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law is sick with a fever. Jesus takes her by the hand and lifts her up (the word that will be used of his resurrection), and she serves them. After the dramatic exorcism in the synagogue, this episode seems almost homey. Plenty of people react to Simon’s mother-in-law waiting on these five men after she has just been in bed with a fever. But later in Mark’s Gospel, after Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter, he will instruct those present to “give her something to eat.” I think Mark is establishing the theme that healings and table-fellowship are connected. It would have been a shame for her not to be able to serve them, so she is being restored to a proper place in the household community. Continue reading “Proclaiming the kingdom”

February 1, 2015
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Epiphany 4B (RCL)
Deuteronomy18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

This reading from Mark’s Gospel is abrupt, as always. Jesus’ first public act is to enter the synagogue in Capernaum on a sabbath and to begin teaching. Mark doesn’t tell us the content of the teaching, but tells us that everyone recognized that teaching as authoritative. Even the demon immediately recognized the authority of Jesus’ words. When Luke tells the story of Jesus’ first sermon in a synagogue, he gives us the passage from Isaiah from which Jesus preaches and Jesus’ sermon. Why would Mark not tell us what Jesus said?

I think Mark leaves us hanging in order to leave a question in our mind as we read the Gospel. What is Jesus’ authority and where does it come from? Continue reading “Demons?”

25 January 2015
Third Sunday after Epiphany
Epiphany 3B (RCL)
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

The story of Jonah has to include the most effective sermon ever preached in the history of preaching. “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be destroyed.” After that single sentence, the whole city was converted and repented. Jonah ought to have been thrilled with the results of his preaching. The humor in the whole story is wonderful, and this is certainly one of the funniest bits. We all (preachers) wish we could be so economical, as I’m sure our congregations also wish.

Jesus’ words in Mark’s Gospel are similarly effective. One sentence Continue reading “Networking”