Third Sunday in Lent; 3 March 2024; Lent 3B (RCL); Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1: 18-25; John 2:13-22.
In the OT reading for this Sunday, we get the third in a series of covenants: Noah, Abram/Abraham, and now Moses, with the Ten Commandments. In the previous two covenants, God gave a sign of the covenant: with Noah, the bow in the clouds; with Abraham, circumcision (though we stopped short of those verses). Likewise in this Sunday’s reading, we stop short of the sign of the covenant: the two tablets of stone. Typically, in Christian iconography, we imagine five commandments on each stone: likely, all ten commandments were on both stones, one to be set up for the people to see, and one to be set up in the presence of God (in the ark of the covenant), so that both parties had a copy.
Continue reading “What sign?”