Category: Lectionary

6 March 2011
Last Sunday after Epiphany
Last Epiphany A (RCL)
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9

It’s too bad we’re not reading a passage a little earlier in 2 Peter. 2 Peter 1:3-7 reads, “His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power. Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. For this very reason, Continue reading “Shining with God’s glory”

27 February 2011
Eighth Sunday after Epiphany
Epiphany 8A (RCL)
Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

Paul has been scolding his Corinthian community for partisanship. Some of them have chosen Apollos as their champion, some Paul, some Cephas. I suspect there are Jew/Gentile issues behind these choices. Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, Cephas as having withdrawn from the Gentile mission (in Antioch) and practicing “judaizing.” I don’t know what camp Apollos represented, but it’s a good Greek name. You can almost hear the arguments in Corinth about whether we ought to observe the law, have complete freedom from it, or somewhere in the middle.

Then, as we get to chapter 4, Paul tells us that a person ought to think of the leaders as servants of Christ and as stewards of the mysteries of God. Continue reading “Stewards of the mysteries”

20 February 2011
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
Epiphany 7A (RCL)
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119:33-40
1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

The Book of Leviticus is one of the most puzzling in the Bible. All these rules about what kind of animals can be sacrificed, and how, and for what circumstances. If you house has leprosy, you have to offer a particular form of sacrifice (we wonder what it means for a house to have leprosy — mildew?). But, when Jewish children are learning to read Hebrew, the first book they read is Leviticus. For them, it is about God’s love affair with the world. Really? Ruminant animals with cloven hooves are good to eat, but ruminants without cloven feet or cloven footed animals not ruminant (like pigs) Continue reading “Be perfect?”

12 December 2010
Third Sunday of Advent
Advent 3A (RCL)
Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146:4-9
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11

Isaiah paints a lovely image of the people’s return from Exile. Unlike the forty years spent wandering in the desert on the way from Egypt to the promised land, this time, on the return from Babylon, not even a fool could get lost. And the desert will blossom, with water aplenty — no more striking rocks to get water. If that was a spectacular thing (the Exodus), wait until you see this, the prophet is saying.

Metaphorically, Continue reading “The desert way”

31 October 2010
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 26C (RCL)
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 119:137-144
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10

There is a major problem with the translations we have of this passage from the Gospel. Zacchaeus makes his statements about giving away half his goods and repaying anyone whom he has defrauded in the present indicative, not in the future tense or subjunctive mood. A good way of translating the sentence would be, “Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look here, I give the half of what belongs to me to the beggars, and if I have defrauded anyone, I pay them back fourfold.” Continue reading “I must stay with you today”

17 October 2010
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 24C (RCL)
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 119:97-104
2 Timothy 3:14 — 4:5
Luke 18:1-8

During the 1970s and 80s, during the “Dirty War” in Argentina, the “Mothers of the Disappeared” marched silently around the Plaza de Mayo in Beunos Aires with pictures of their disappeared children. Their silent witness eventually shamed the world, and helped to bring down the military junta in Argentina. The Mothers held there last march in 2006, saying that government was no longer indifferent to the fate of the disappeared, and was in fact trying to find Continue reading “Persistence”

10 October 2010
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 23 (RCL)
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66:1-11
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

The passage from Jeremiah must have been tremendously troubling for those who received it. Jeremiah had been a bit of a pest to the establishment in Jerusalem — all his gloom and doom predictions. And, of course, things came out just as he had said. Now, here they were in Exile (the elites, at any rate), and Jeremiah is telling them to build houses, have families, settle down — to accommodate, after excoriating them for accommodating while they were in Jerusalem. He is encouraging them to mingle into the population in Babylon, to do like immigrants have always had to do, live in the host culture, without making too much of a distinction. Take wives, have sons, take wives for your sons, give your daughters in marriage. Really?

The passage in Luke concerns the ten lepers, Continue reading “Foreign born”

3 October 2010
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 22 C
Lamentations 1:1-6
Lamentations 3:19-26
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

This Gospel reading smacks us in the face with our “unworthiness”. We are to be like uncomplaining slaves, right? Just do what you’re told, and don’t expect any praise. It’s unfortunate that we cut off the beginning of the reading. vv. 1-4 read: “He said to his disciples, ‘Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times, saying “I am sorry,” you should forgive him.'” Then comes, “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.'”

In Luke’s Gospel, Continue reading “Mulberry trees”

19 September 2010
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 20C (RCL)
Jeremiah 8:18 – 9:1
Psalm 79:1-9
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13

This passage from Luke’s Gospel always provokes comment. How could Jesus tell a story in which (by extension) he appears to approve shady conduct? Commentators through the ages have contorted themselves to make sense of it. Even Luke attaches a number of different possible interpretations to the parable: the children this age are more shrewd that the children of light; make friends for yourselves by dishonest wealth; whoever is faithful in a little will be faithful in a lot. Which is it?

The question that strikes me is, “If you have not been faithful in what belongs to another, who will trust you with what is your own?” Continue reading “What is yours?”

12 September 2010
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 19C (RCL)
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

Jeremiah wrote his prophecies near the end of the southern kingdom. He was seeking to explain why God, who had at one time been seemingly so good to Judah, should now turn and bring evil on them. Of course, we would say God had nothing to do with it — it was all just geo-politics. But Jeremiah was trying to fashion a working monotheism. If there was only one God, the same god for all nations, then when one nation conquered another, it must be God’s will. If there are many gods (for each nation), then disaster just means that one god has gained ascendancy in the divine council. But Jeremiah has to struggle to find a monotheistic solution. Now, we have an understanding of a God who enters human affairs, not just on the side of the victorious, Continue reading “Seeking the lost”