Lectionary – Page 8 – A Preacher’s Ponderings

One thing

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost; 24 July 2022; Proper 11C (RCL); Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42.

The Amos passage is again hard to hear, perhaps even harder than last week. The word play is on “summer fruit” and “end.” The NIV catches the play. God asks Amos what he sees, and he replies, “A basket of ripe fruit.” God replies, “The time is ripe for my people Israel.” God will make an end of Israel. Amos does not provide an image of any hope held out for God’s people. Worst of all is the famine for hearing God’s word — God is no longer found among God’s people. Nothing is left.

Neighbors

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost; 10 July 2022; Proper 10C (RCL); Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37.

In Track 1 in the RCL, we read through the major events in Old Testament history, and in Year C, Ordinary Time, we’re reading through the end of the two kingdoms. Amos is the first prophet of whom we have any record of his sayings. He is beginning to predict the collapse of the Northern Kingdom. As would become the standard trope of the deuteronomistic historians, Amos lays the blame for the impending collapse squarely in the kingdom itself, and particularly its king. Never mind the geopolitical forces that would bring disaster to both Israel and Judah, it is their faithlessness, according to the prophets, that brings about their end.

Sounds of silence

Second Sunday after Pentecost; 19 June 2022; Proper 7C (RCL); 1 Kings 19:1-15a; Psalms 42-43; Glatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39.

The reading from 1 Kings is quite rich. Elijah has just won his contest with the 450 prophets of Baal, and has had them killed at the Wadi Kishon, and the people had fallen on their faces and acknowledged the Lord as God. Jezebel has threatened Elijah, who has fled for his life, to Beersheba, in Judah, out of her reach. In the wilderness, he sits under a broom tree and asks to die. Jonah would echo Elijah as he sat under the castor bean plant outside Nineveh.

Trinity

Trinity Sunday; 12 June 2022; Trinity Sunday C (RCL); Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15.

It seems like the designers of the lectionary might have found passages that seemed more directly to refer to the persons of the Trinity — some of the blessings in Paul’s letters seem to come close to a doctrine of the Trinity. Perhaps we used all those up in Years A and B, and this is all that’s left for Year C. In any event, the doctrine itself isn’t explicit in the New Testament, and was only settled after centuries of reflection on the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, and took its shape from the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Greater works

Pentecost; 5 June 2022; Day of Pentecost C (RCL); Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27.

Luke has loaded these verses in Acts with a wealth of intertextual references. There is the reference to the creation story (God’s breath blowing over the primal chaos), the pillar of fire in the wilderness, and of course the quasi-reversal of Babel (the story of Babel is one of the optional readings on this day).

Unity

Seventh Sunday of Easter; 29 May 2022; Easter 7C (RCL); Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26.

This is one of those passages in John in which boundaries are blurred. If you listen to it (rather than read it), by the end, you’re not sure who is in whom. I think that is precisely the evangelist’s point. If we entrust our lives to one another, then our lives will overlap. Jesus has entrusted his life to us, and in that life is the Father, so our lives and the divine life overlap. We are one just as the Trinity is one (even though John does not use the concept of Trinity, he comes close). Just as we share in the divine life, we share in each other’s lives.

A spirit of peace

Sixth Sunday of Easter; 22 May 2022; Easter 6C (RCL); Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:10, 22 – 22:5; John 14:23-29.

I always wonder if the author of the Book of Revelation could have had any idea that his (I presume he was male) book would end up as the last book of the Christian canon. I know that such is impossible as there was no canon for another couple of centuries after he completed his work, but this passage makes a perfect end to the overarching story of scripture.

Little children

Fifth Sunday of Easter; 15 May 2022; Easter 5C (RCL); Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35.

This passage in John, like so many passages, seems to be full of non sequiturs. We jump from the mutual glorification of Father and Son, to Jesus’ address to his disciples, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer,” and his statement that they cannot come where he is going, to a new commandment. It seems like three unrelated sayings.

Conversion

Third Sunday of Easter; 1 May 2022; Easter 3C (RCL); Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19.

Luke summarizes and compresses (and fictionalizes) the story of Paul’s conversion. Paul himself gives several accounts of it: in Galatians and in 2 Corinthians, both times as authorization for the gospel he preaches. But Luke catches the essential elements. The passage in John’s Gospel gives us something like a conversion story for Peter.

Reconciliation

Second Sunday of Easter; 24 April 2022; Easter 2C (RCL); Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31.

This passage in John is home to one of the most egregious mistranslations in the New Testament. In almost every translation, Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.” There is almost no way to construe the Greek to mean this. What the Greek says is μὴ γίνου ἂπιστος ἀλλὰ πιστός. A literal translation would be, Do not be untrustworthy, but trustworthy. Or, you could even translate as untrusty and trusty. And Thomas doesn’t doubt; he refuses to believe.