lectionary reading

Valerie Bridgeman 6-01-2020

Illustration by Ellen Weinstein

ORDINARY TIME RARELY is. These texts in July fall in “ordinary” time on the Christian liturgical calendar, that time after the holy days of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. I often think about the irony of this time being designated “ordinary,” since rarely is it ordinary or mundane. There usually is something going on in the world that demands our attention or causes us concern. Certainly, that is true in this season of the coronavirus. So “ordinary,” as we know it, is hardly an apt term.

The term “ordinary,” which comes from the “ordinal” numerals by which the weeks are counted, reflects that we are not in the season of “high holy” days, except for an occasional recognition of a saint or significant moment in history for the church writ large. Ordinary time is just under half of the Sundays on the calendar. It is the time when Christians recount the stories of their faith, across the biblical canon, in order to strengthen their commitments to discipleship and to study and reflect on what it means to be the people of God, both in one’s own life and in the community’s formation.

These Sundays in July capture the day-to-day nature of our faith. The parables in Matthew give us glimpses of God’s reign, tantalizing us. Paul’s letters remind us that sometimes we really struggle to become who God created us to be. The texts call us into curiosity, into covenant, into commitment, and into community. It is an extraordinary challenge.

July 5

Discerning Our Way

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:10-17; Romans 7:15-25; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

AT FIRST BLUSH, the Hebrew Bible texts for this week are all about finding and celebrating one’s mate for life. Abraham’s servant (Genesis 24:34) goes to find a wife for Isaac among Abraham’s kindred. Since the servant doesn’t know who they are, he must come to some way to discern. How will he know? He prays for success. He prays that the woman he finds will be willing to leave her family. And, like the bride in Psalm 45, Rebekah does indeed return with him. Here we read the end of the trip, but Genesis 24 begins with the servant’s angst about how to know.

How to know. These stories show us at least one way to know: Pray and look for signs. But looking for signs does not always work. Maybe it worked here because the servant did not ask for himself, but for Abraham’s sake. Maybe were he looking for himself, his own desires might get in the way. Perhaps that is what Romans 7 points toward. We are burdened with human nature that struggles to do the right thing, to find what the right thing is to do. Paul says, “nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh” (verse 18). These words could be jarring to us. They are to me. I want to believe that we are fundamentally good at discernment, that our “flesh” (Paul’s word for our selfish nature) doesn’t drive our desires. But if I am honest, I must confess that it does.

Illustration by Shin Yeon Moon

EARLY ON IN my training for hospital chaplaincy the spiritual care director asked each student to choose a biblical role model of faith. I chose the Apostle Paul. It wasn’t an obvious choice for someone raised as a feminist and aware of the damage done to women through interpretation of Paul’s letters and those attributed to him.

Despite that, I love the way Paul’s faith and humanity shine through his words. Even in his letter to the Romans, one of Paul’s last and most-polished, we have a sense of his limitations. He mixes confidence and humility, offering an unflinching look at sin: collective sin and the sin that is particular to each of us, broken beloveds of God.

I need Paul’s writing on sin so that I don’t grow too self-righteous. When Paul writes that we received God’s grace “while we were still weak” (Romans 5:6), I am reminded that I can’t claim righteousness before God on my own. It is only when we have an honest estimation of ourselves and our capabilities that we can engage in justice work without moralizing or neglecting to set good boundaries.

Taking sin seriously means not only fighting back against oppression but taking a hard look at myself. In my feminism, am I aware of and working to end the ways misogyny particularly oppresses black, brown, Asian, and Indigenous women, as well as queer and trans people? Do I put my own concerns first or truly seek liberation for all people?

June 7

With Us Always

Genesis 1:1-2, 4; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

READING THE CREATION story in Genesis, I imagine myself deep inside a dark place, with the breath of God like a gust of wind. I recall James Weldon Johnson’s poem “The Creation,” especially as it is read by James Earl Jones in a short film featuring animated clay art by Joan C. Gratz. The darkness through which God births the world is “blacker than a hundred midnights / down in a cypress swamp.” From that rich blackness comes the countless colors of the myriad creatures that dwell on the earth.

Martin L. Smith 1-28-2019

A Syrian man carries his daughter, as refugees abandon the makeshift camp of Idomeni in northern Greece. Giannis Papanikos/Shutterstock

THE DEUTERONOMY PASSAGE that ushers in our Lenten pilgrimage underscores the sacred mandate to embrace foreign immigrants with generous hospitality. Instructions for the liturgy for harvest thanksgiving conclude: “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you” (26:11). Worshippers are required to certify in the assembly before God that they have participated in providing what the vulnerable in society need, not least refugees. “I have removed the sacred portion from the house, and I have given it to the Levites, the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows” (verse 13). Paul speaks of the Spirit of freedom removing the veil that blinds us to the core meaning of the sacred texts. In the current climate of xenophobia and incitements to make refugees into scapegoats, Christians are called to rip down the veil that prevents people from hearing this Word.

As for the intimate personal dimension or Lenten conversion, this might be the time to realize more profoundly that much of our own sinfulness and confusion arises from the harshness with which each one of us rejects and starves elements of our own inner “community of selves,” those parts of our humanity we try to disclaim and repress. It is the Spirit’s inner work of integration that teaches us to embrace those “selves of the self” we find ugly, pathetic, needy, or too passionate and creative for comfort. Our outer practice and inner practice of hospitality and inclusion belong together.

[ March 3 ]
Radiation Exposure

Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-43a

“And all of us with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The Epiphany season’s celebration of the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ concludes with the theme of transfiguration (metamorphosis is the Greek word). The appointed scriptures are the key for understanding the dynamic of Lent as we prepare to enter that season of renewal. Our transformation can never be accomplished by conforming to external imperatives, nor by the embracing of “values,” however lofty and demanding. Our moral transformation works through contemplation of the open heart of God exposed in the self-giving life of Christ, a kind of contemplation as “radiation therapy” in which our inner falsity is irradiated by the beams of God’s unbounded, costly love, lived out by Jesus through his “exodus” (Luke 9:31) into the cross.

Prayer is the perpetual treatment in which, little by little, we deepen our participation in the divine life of vulnerability, transparency, and truthfulness. “We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word” (2 Corinthians 4:2), but this is not the result of our own program of moral effort; it rises from “the Lord, the Spirit” doing the work of inner liberation in us while we are steadfastly fixing our gaze on Jesus.

Walter Brueggemann 4-22-2011

In Christian confession, Good Friday is the day of loss and defeat; Sunday is the day of recovery and victory. Friday and Sunday summarize the drama of the gospel that continues to be re-performed, always again, in the life of faith. In the long gospel reading of the lectionary for this week (Matthew 27:11-54), we hear the Friday element of that drama: the moment when Jesus cries out to God in abandonment (Matthew 27: 46). This reading does not carry us, for this day, toward the Sunday victory, except for the anticipatory assertion of the Roman soldier who recognized that Jesus is the power of God for new life in the world (verse 54). Given that anticipation, the reading invites the church to walk into the deep loss in hope of walking into the new life that will come at the end of the drama.

Jim Wallis 4-20-2011

 

[Editors' note: During the season of Lent we will be posting excerpts from the Rediscovering Values Lenten Study Guide. We invite you to study God's word with us through these posts.]

Jim Wallis 4-12-2011

 

[Editors' note: During the season of Lent we will be posting excerpts from the Rediscovering Values Lenten Study Guide. We invite you to study God's word with us through these posts.]

Jim Wallis 4-06-2011

[Editors' note: During the season of Lent we will be posting excerpts from the Rediscovering Values Lenten Study Guide. We invite you to study God's word with us through these posts.]

Jim Wallis 3-29-2011

 

[Editors' note: During the season of Lent we will be posting excerpts from the Rediscovering Values Lenten Study Guide. We invite you to study God's word with us through these posts.]

Jim Wallis 3-15-2011

 

[Editors' note: During the season of Lent we will be posting excerpts from the Rediscovering Values Lenten Study Guide. We invite you to study God's word with us through these posts.]

Jim Wallis 3-09-2011

 

[Editors' note: During the season of Lent we will be posting excerpts from the Rediscovering Values Lenten Study Guide. We invite you to study God's word with us through these posts.]

Elizabeth Palmberg 8-25-2010
"You are the Potter, I am the clay." I grew up singing that in youth group at church -- but never with very much enthusiasm.