Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for March 26, 2023 (Lent 5A)

First Reading: Ezekiel 37:1-14

Our readings change in tone this Sunday as we turn toward Palm Sunday and Holy Week. The metaphorical reflections on temptation, faith and sight that we have heard so far in Lent now move toward explicit ideas of victory over death through resurrection.

The Raising of Lazarus, oil painting on canvas, transferred from wood (1517) by Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547). National Gallery, London. (Click image to enlarge)

In our first reading, the prophet Ezekiel imagines a valley filled with dry bones: an eerie and alarming sight. In these poetic verses, God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy, and as he does so, the dry bones become connected, covered with skin, and then breathed to life as a vast multitude. Ezekiel’s prophetic vision reveals God’s promise to restore exiled Israel to its own land, the land that God had promised Moses and the people at Mount Sinai.

Psalm: Psalm 130

Psalm 130 may be most familiar for its use, under the Latin title “De Profundis” (“out of the depths”), as one of the Psalms that the Book of Common Prayer suggests for the burial of the dead. Its hopeful cadences remind us that even in times of grief, pain and despair, we wait in hope for God’s love and grace. Even in death we await the resurrection, as in night’s darkest hours we wait for morning light.

Second Reading: Romans 8:6-11

This passage from Paul’s Letter to the Romans offers a brief glimpse of his continuing examination of the distinctions between flesh and spirit. All of us – even Jesus, as fully human – live embodied lives. But, Paul goes on, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus have given us a new reality: When we accept God’s spirit within us through Jesus, we gain the hope of life, peace and resurrection.

Gospel: John 11:1-45

Why didn’t Jesus hurry back home when he got word that his friend Lazarus was ill? When he finally arrives, his friends Mary and Martha – devastated by the death of Lazarus their brother – confront Jesus separately with the same words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus assures Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. … everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Then, when Mary weeps, Jesus weeps with her. And then he goes to the tomb and raises Lazarus from the dead. The crowd looking on is amazed. But the verses that follow immediately after this passage reveal that the priests and temple authorities, fearful that Jesus’ bold acts will bring Roman retribution, decide that Jesus must die.

Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for March 19, 2023 (Lent 4A)

First Reading: 1 Samuel 16:1-13

Through Sunday’s Lectionary readings we reflect on light and sight: What do we see, and how do we see it?

Healing the Man Born Blind (1605-1606), fresco for the Church of San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, Rome, by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), later transferred to canvas. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona. (Click image to enlarge)

In our first reading, we learn that God has rejected Saul as king of Israel. Now God sends a rather unwilling Samuel to take on the risky chore of finding a successor to Saul. God sends Samuel to Jesse the Bethlehemite, among whose eight sons God has chosen the next king. Samuel examines seven of the young men, one at a time, but doesn’t find God’s chosen one. Asking if there is any other, Samuel discovers David, Jesse’s youngest son, who had seemed such an unlikely choice that he had been sent to watch the sheep. But God saw the spirit in David that the others could not detect. David is to become king and will be next in the Messiah’s line.

Psalm: Psalm 23

Who doesn’t know and love the 23rd Psalm? It brings comfort in time of trouble and trial, reminding us that in our darkest hours and most threatening times, God walks with us, protects us and comforts us. Ancient tradition held that David himself wrote these verses. Most modern scholars doubt that. But kings and commoners alike can take joy from knowing that God’s rod and staff comfort us, and God’s goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives.

Second Reading: Ephesians 5:8-14

This short letter, probably written in Paul’s name a generation or more after his death, contains some problems for modern Christians who take it out of its historical and cultural context. It appears to sanction slavery, for example, and it firmly puts women in their place as “subject” to their husbands. Sunday’s short passage, however, offers a poetic view of light against darkness. Perhaps echoing John’s vision of Jesus as the light shining in the darkness, it points us toward the Gospel about the man born blind.

Gospel: John 9:1-41

For millennia many humans have held on to the troubling idea that blindness and other disabilities are God’s way of punishing a person’s sins or even the sins of their ancestors. In this Gospel, Jesus makes it clear that God does no such thing. In a long narrative we hear the intriguing details about how Jesus healed the man with a mixture of mud and saliva spread on his eyes and washed in a pool. Then Jesus disappears from the narrative, leaving us to listen in on a long and fruitless discussion among the Pharisees, the no-longer-blind man, and his family. Finally Jesus returns, and his words make clear that God works in the world through grace, not punishment, and that the miracle of healing cannot come from sin or evil.

Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for March 12, 2023 (Lent 3A)

First Reading: Exodus 17:1-7

This week’s readings focus our thoughts on water and thirst … and a bit of gratitude. We may thirst for righteousness, mercy and justice, but when we are thirsty and need water, this simple human need takes precedence.

Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well (1796), oil painting on canvas by Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807). Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. (Click image to enlarge)

Sunday’s readings take us from the thirsty Israelites in the desert to Jesus stopping for water and rest in a Samaritan town. In our first reading from Exodus, the Israelites are no longer hungry – in previous verses, they have just received miraculous manna – but they still have no water. Their constant thirst makes them so angry that they wish they were back in slavery in Egypt, where at least their basic needs of life were met. Moses is angry and outdone with them, but God provides a miracle to quench their thirst.

Psalm: Psalm 95

Psalm 95, which we also know as the Venite in Morning Prayer, begins with a surprisingly joyous tone for the penitential time of Lent. But its sounds of praise for God change key abruptly in Verse 8, when the Psalmist reminds us of the story we heard in the Exodus reading: The thirsty, angry people turned their hearts away from God and put God to the test. The Psalmist imagines that these actions drove God to “loathe” these ungrateful people and leave them lost 40 years in the desert.

Second Reading: Romans 5:1-11

The infant church in Rome has known suffering. Some of its members were forced into exile, and the entire congregation was at risk for its faith. But their suffering gives them the opportunity to learn endurance and build their character, Paul reminds them, by means of their hope in the love that God pours into their hearts through the Spirit. Even though the people are sinners, we hear, they are justified through faith and saved through Jesus’s death on the cross.

Gospel: John 4:5-42

Jesus, like the people in the desert, was tired and thirsty after a long journey. Returning from Jerusalem to Galilee (a journey that we hear about only in John’s Gospel), he decided to pass through the country of the Samaritans even though they were not on good terms with their Jewish neighbors. Jesus struck up a conversation with a Samaritan woman, asking her for a drink. These actions surprised her, as Jewish men of the era weren’t likely to engage with Samaritans, much less Samaritan women. Then his conversation surprised her even more, as he promised her the unending “living water” of God’s spirit, foretold an end to the differences between their people, and declared himself the Messiah.

Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for March 5, 2023 (Lent 2A)

First Reading: Genesis 12:1-4a

We began Lent last week by pondering readings about temptation, sin, and repentance. This week our thoughts turn to faith: our deep conviction that God waits with us when we make decisions that shape our lives.

Christ and Nicodemus (c.1850), watercolor by Aleksandr Andreevich Ivanov (1806-1858). The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. (Click image to enlarge)

In our first reading, we meet Abram, whom God will later rename Abraham. Even at the advanced age of 75, Abram’s faith gave him the strength to risk of following God’s call to uproot his family and begin the people’s long journey from his home in Ur (in present-day Iraq) toward the promised land. In response to Abram’s faith and trust, God will bless him and his family; and through him, God will bless all the families of the Earth.

Psalm: Psalm 121

When I served as a hospital chaplain, I kept a bookmark set on Psalm 121. Its verses, I found, brought comfort and peace to many as they faced whatever crisis had brought them for urgent care. We lift up our eyes to the hills seeking help, the Psalmist sings; and that help comes from God watching over us and protecting us. As Paul will observe in the second reading, God’s help is not meted out to reward us for our faith or for anything else we do. God watches over our going out and our coming in because that is who God is, and that is what God does.

Second Reading: Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

Paul recalls the foundational story of Abraham in this passage from his pastoral letter to the church in Rome. His theological reflection seems consistent with Psalm 121: God’s promise of eternal life comes to us, as it came to Abraham, not in reward for anything that we have done to deserve it, but entirely through our faith by grace. Seeking in this letter to restore Rome’s Jewish Christians and pagan converts to unity, he reminds them that God’s promise depends on faith, not something due to us, but a gift. It was given to all the nations, not to Abraham’s descendants alone.

Gospel: John 3:1-17

Nicodemus, a Pharisee who came to see Jesus in the dark of night, couldn’t figure how a grown person could creep back into the mother’s body to be “born again.” But Jesus saw no contradiction between being born of the flesh as an infant and being “born again,” or, as it can also be translated, “born from above,” not in the flesh but through faith and the Spirit. Then we hear the familiar words of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Does this mean that only Christians can be saved? Jesus’s teaching surely rules that out. The next verse makes clear that Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world and all its nations.

Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for Feb. 26, 2023 (Lent 1A)

First Reading: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Sunday’s Lectionary readings open the Lenten season with scriptural views of temptation and sin.

The Temptation on the Mount, (1308-1311). Tempera painting on wood by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1260–1318), the Frick Collection, New York City. (Click image to enlarge)

Our first reading picks up the creation legend just as Eve and Adam submit to temptation and eat the fruit that God had told them not to touch. God had warned them that eating the fruit would make them vulnerable to death. But even that was not enough to turn them away from the crafty serpent’s temptation, the promise that eating the forbidden fruit would give them Godlike knowledge of good and evil. Temptation was powerful; but so was the shame that followed when they realized they had broken their relationship with God.

Psalm: Psalm 32

Psalm 32 exalts the joy, relief and “glad cries of deliverance” that erupt from our souls when we accept God’s sure forgiveness. Indeed, God’s steadfast love surrounds all who trust enough to acknowledge our wrongdoing, the Psalmist sings. Joy comes when we confess our transgressions and accept God’s loving deliverance from the pain and guilt of being separated from God through sin.

Second Reading: Romans 5:12-19

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, which we will visit during much of Lent, Paul offers pastoral guidance to Gentile converts to Christianity and Jewish Christians returning from exile. Paul sketches a direct connection between the sin of Adam (curiously, he doesn’t mention Eve) and the divinity of Jesus Christ, the son of God. If Adam’s yielding to the temptation of the fruit brought death into the world, as Genesis tells us, then the incarnation of Jesus as fully human – one of us – restores justification and life for all through God’s gift of grace.

Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11

At the beginning of Epiphany, we heard Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus, when the voice of God declared him God’s beloved Son. Now we turn the page to discover that the Spirit led Jesus directly from the Jordan into the wilderness … to be tempted by the devil! This may seem a very strange thing for the Holy Spirit to do, but the Spirit works in mysterious ways. The devil – in a role something like the Satan, the adversary who tested Job’s faith – tries to test Jesus, too. The tempter tries three times to persuade Jesus to perform miracles to help himself. But Jesus stands strong, and at the end of 40 days of fasting, without giving in to temptation, Jesus orders the devil away.