Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Oct. 20, 2024 (Pentecost 22B/Proper 24)

James and John stand on either side of Jesus in this Orthodox icon of Jesus and the apostles. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading (Track One): Job 38:1-7, 34-41

Job has been loudly lamenting his condition and looking everywhere for God, angrily demanding that God come out of hiding and hear him. Now Job gets his wish. God speaks to him out of a whirlwind in power and might, and quickly sets Job in his place, hurling poetic words at Job like thunderbolts: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” There is no promise that chaos and disaster will not occur in wind and flood and starvation. Nothing in creation is greater than its Creator.

First Reading (Track Two): Isaiah 53:4-12

Throughout Sunday’s readings we hear of servant leadership, sacrifice, and walking humbly with our God. Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant,” who we meet often in our readings (most recently only last month) may make us think of Jesus in his willing sacrifice to bear the sins of many. In its original context, though, Isaiah writes of the servant’s suffering in the past tense, remembering Israel itself as the servant, the sacrificial pain of its sad exile now finally come to an end.

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 104:1-9,35, 37c

Psalm 104, a hymn of exaltation, surely rang out over the ancient Temple in Jerusalem amid blasts on the shofar and shouts of praise. The Psalmist envisions God clothed in majesty and splendor, wrapped in a cloak of light that crosses the heavens. God rides across the world on the wings of clouds, spreading out mountains and valleys, oceans and rivers, setting Earth immovably on its foundations and separating the land from the water.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 91:9-16

In Psalm 91 we offer grateful thanksgiving to God as our protector and provider. In a striking catalogue of the many bad things that can happen to good people – evil events, plague, injury, even attacks by lions and venomous serpents – the Psalmist reminds us that we live in God’s shadow. We recognize God as our refuge and our stronghold. God will help us because we are bound to God in love. When we call on God, God will answer.

Second Reading: Hebrews 5:1-10

These verses from the letter to the Hebrews presents Jesus as the perfect high priest, a new high priest with a new covenant and new sacrifice. But this high position did not come easily. Because Jesus was fully human, he was not immune from suffering; he suffered “with loud cries and tears.” He learned obedience through his suffering, even as God’s own Son and the perfect image of God. Thus Jesus became the greatest of the line of priests that began with King Melchizedek, the first high priest named in Genesis.

Gospel: Mark 10:35-45

Jesus nicknamed James and John “the Sons of Thunder,” and they do seem to be a fiery pair. We saw them thundering just a few weeks ago, when they complained that other people were casting out demons in Jesus’s name. Now they are acting clueless again. They don’t ask Jesus, they tell Jesus that they want to sit at his side in God’s kingdom. Jesus has news for them: To follow Jesus we must be servants, not those served; if we wish to be first, we must become the slave of all.

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Oct. 13, 2024 (Pentecost 21B/Proper 23)

Christ and the Rich Young Ruler (1889), oil painting on canvas by Heinrich Hofmann (1824-1911). Riverside Church, New York. Ironically, this painting was purchased for Riverside Church by John D Rockefeller Jr., one of the richest men in the world. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading (Track One): Job 23:1-9, 16-17

Tormented beyond imagination, Job has lost everything. All his possessions and much of his family are gone. His friends, seeking to console him, have done a very poor job of showing compassion. He must have done something wrong, they scolded him in the verses just before this reading. Did his lack of piety or his great wickedness anger God. Now Job responds with bitter, angry words: He deserves a chance to lay out the facts. He has a right to argue his case before God. If only God will hear him, he is sure that he will prevail. He looks in every direction, he can’t find God anywhere. Terrified, he wants to vanish into darkness. Next week, we hear God’s reply.

First Reading (Track Two): Amos 5:6-7, 10-15

We are called to subject ourselves to God, to behave justly, and to give generously to the poor, never stealing from or harming those who are less favored than we are. Listen for this theme through Sunday’s Lectionary readings. In our Track Two first reading the Prophet Amos warns Israel’s Northern Kingdom that its practice of living well while trampling the poor will lead to disaster at the hands of the Assyrians. “Seek good and not evil,” urges the prophet. Indeed, just a few verses after this passage, Amos will utter this familiar call to the people of God: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 22:1-15

When Jesus was dying on the cross, in his final agony he cried out the words that begin Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Psalmist’s pain revealed in these verses seem to echo Job’s lament. This is the cry of one who has suffered as Job has suffered, mocked by those around him and sunk in the depth of despair. He thinks that he has no place to turn. And yet God remains, the creator who knew him as an infant and who, he prays, will remember him now.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 90:12-17

We jump in to the middle of this Psalm in Sunday’s readings, skipping past the first portion in which the writer – held by unlikely tradition to be Moses himself – has warned of God’s anger with a sinful people. In these verses we plead with God to return, to show loving-kindness, to teach the people to be wise, and to replace our adversity with gladness. Through God’s works, grace and splendor, we pray, may the people be wise, turn the work of our hands to God’s purposes, and enjoy prosperity as the result of our handiwork.

Second Reading: Hebrews 4:12-16

Perhaps this passage from the letter to the Hebrews unintentionally reveals its roots in Roman persecution of the early church that had led some Christians to abandon their faith out of fear. It speaks of Jesus in terms that we seldom associate with the Good Shepherd: “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow … before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare …” And yet, though we are called to account before God, we know that Jesus, as fully human, knows and understands us: Through Jesus, the living and active word of God and our great high priest we receive God’s mercy and grace.

Gospel: Mark 10:17-31

“Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor … then come, follow me.” Really? Stewardship season is coming soon, when we will be invited to pledge our support of the church. Luckily for us, however, we’re not expected to give everything we own – are we? Perhaps these verses, like the Sermon on the Mount, challenge us by setting Jesus as a standard of perfection that we can aim for but won’t likely reach. Or perhaps we are meant to squirm, remembering just how rich we are, and ask ourselves if our possessions in any way stand between us and real love of God and neighbor.

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Oct. 6, 2024 (Pentecost 20B/Proper 22)

Job on the Ash Heap (c.1630), oil painting on canvas by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652). Sotheby’s, New York. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading (Track One): Job 1:1; 2:1-10

Why would an all-powerful, loving God allow bad things to happen to good people? The Book of Job is often held up as a guide to understanding this theological quandary, but this approach may leave the hopeful reader less than satisfied. What are we to make of its clear impression that God actually caused Job’s suffering because, incredibly, Satan talked God into testing Job as a sort of bet? As we read through Job in Track One this month, recognize it as an important part of the Bible’s wisdom literature, the books that unveil the authors’ ideas about life and God, seeking to explain the inexplicable.

First Reading (Track Two): Genesis 2:18-24

Think about relationships through Sunday’s unusually difficult Lectionary readings, trying to read them faithfully yet generously. Our Track Two first reading, for example, singles out the Genesis legend about God making Eve from Adam’s rib as a helper for the first man. Over the ages, this has often been interpreted to place women in a secondary status to men. Then in this week’s selection from Mark’s Gospel we hear another troubling passage: Jesus rejects divorce in words so strict and uncompromising that they have often been invoked outside their first century context to hold people in abusive relationships.

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 26

Just as Job, we are told, was “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil,” Psalm 26 declares before God that the Psalmist has lived with integrity and trusted in God without faltering. Considering the trials of Job, we might wonder if the author of this psalm is tempting fate when he invites God to “test me … and try me.” We may also hear a hint of Pharisaical self-satisfaction in the writer’s desire not to be counted among the evildoers or to suffer their punishment. But in the end this plea is humble. It promises integrity and asks only for God’s pity and redemption.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 8

This beautiful psalm feels appropriate to a day when many congregations bless companion animals in memory of St. Francis of Assisi. It begins as a hymn of praise, celebrating the glories of God’s creation. In lyrical poetry it declares the beauty of the universe and all that populates it as testimony to God’s majesty: The heavens, the moon, the stars, all the work of God’s hands, are so great that mere humanity seems small in comparison. Even so, for better or for worse, we are given charge of all the wild and domestic animals and creatures of the sea.

Second Reading: Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

Now we begin seven weeks with the letter to the Hebrews, a journey that will carry us to the end of the Pentecost season. The letter to the Hebrews is thought to be an ancient letter to Jewish Christians who had gone back to Judaism for fear of persecution. While it is fervently pro-Christian, we should take care not to read parts of it as anti-Jewish. The verses we hear this Sunday recognize the stewardship over creation that God assigned to humanity in the Genesis creation stories, crowning human beings with glory and honor, “subjecting all things under their feet.”

Gospel: Mark 10:2-16

Jesus’s strict command against divorce is difficult to hear in modern times, when divorce has become acceptable, if unhappy; a troubled end to a relationship. In the patriarchal culture of Jesus’s time, divorce was even worse, because it was inequitable: A man could set aside his marriage for any reason, or keep his wife trapped in an abusive relationship. A woman had no recourse, could not practically initiate divorce, and worse, a woman alone was likely to end up homeless and hungry, shamed and reduced to begging. Should it surprise us that Jesus spoke firmly against that unequal practice, using language that recalled the words of Eve’s creation from Genesis?

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Sept. 29, 2024 (Pentecost 19B/Proper 21)

Season of Creation: Bless Sunday

Jesus with the little children (1620s), partially restored painting possibly by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) or by Jan Six I (1618-1700). Private collection. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading (Track One): Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22

Creation Focus: Plotting death backfires on schemer
There’s something unique about this reading: It offers the only time that the three-year Lectionary draws from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Esther … and even this is only for those following Track One! This passage comes near the end of this exciting story that, in Jewish tradition, is read in its entirety on the feast of Purim. In these verses Queen Esther of Persia reveals at a banquet feast that she is Jewish and thus would herself be killed with her people if the wicked plotter Haman carried out his plan to kill or enslave all of Persia’s Jews. The king, angry about Haman’s plotting, orders him hanged on a giant gallows, and justice is served. This event is remembered in Jewish tradition with feasting, joy, and gifts of food for each other and the poor.

First Reading (Track Two): Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

Creation Focus: Greed destroys; find contentment
Listen! We listen for the voice of God. We ask God to listen to us when we pray. We listen to each other, and sometimes we hear. Listen for themes of listening and hearing in Sunday’s readings. In our first reading we hear the people in the desert, sick and tired of manna, hungrily remembering the good food they enjoyed in Egypt; so hungry that they would eagerly return to Pharaoh’s slavery for something good to eat. God is angry. Moses is angry! Fortunately, God offers a practical solution: Moses may name seventy elders to help him carry the load of leadership. Then, two men who had remained in the camp started prophesying without supervision! Moses’ assistant Joshua wants them punished, but Moses says no: He wishes that all the people could prophesy and share God’s spirit.

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 124

Creation Focus: Raging waters destroy; follow God’s way to calm them
Remembering another time when Israel feared death at the hands of enemies, Psalm 124 sings joyous thanksgiving for God’s protection, when God parted the waters of the Red Sea when they escaped Pharaoh’s bondage in Egypt. If God had not been on their side when the enemies rose up against them, we sing, the waters would have overwhelmed them! The torrent would have gone over them! But God did not give them up. They escaped, singing, “Our help is in the Name of the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.”

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 19:7-14

Creation Focus: Find joy in following God’s good path in Creation
Listen and hear, as we sing this psalm that calls on us to pray and tells us why we should pray. God’s commandments are good, and to follow them does us good, we sing. Sweeter than honey and more desirable than gold, God’s laws and commandments enlighten us and keep us on a straight path. How do we pray? The answer is so important that we repeat it twice: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my strength, my rock, and my redeemer.”

Second Reading: James 5:13-20

Creation Focus: Pray for Creation’s healing, save each other
As we reach the end of our month long visit with the letter of James, this powerful epistle has called on us to care for our neighbors, to protect the weak, and to do the work that God has given us to do. Now the letter ends with a call to prayer: Are we suffering? Pray! Are we happy? Sing hymns of praise! Are we sick? Ask our friends to pray for us! Prayer works, the author of James says. When we bring our brothers and sisters back to God’s way, we save them from death. God works through us as God worked through the prophet Elijah when the prophet prayed for an end to a killing drought and famine.

Gospel: Mark 9:38-50

Creation Focus: Ally with any who heal Creation; support youth
The Apostle John seems angry and perhaps a little possessive in this Gospel passage. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us,” he yells. We can imagine him running up to Jesus and demanding, “Make him stop! He’s not authorized!” But Jesus isn’t bothered. “Do not stop him,” he tells the apostles, adding, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Jesus, perhaps using an old rabbinic tradition of contrasting an act with an extreme alternative, goes on with some pretty scary language about staying on the right path or else. But his point is clear: If people are with us, don’t throw them out.

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Sept. 15, 2024 (Pentecost 17B/Proper 19)

Season of Creation: Act Sunday

Peter the Apostle (c.1610-1614), oil painting on canvas by El Greco (1541-1614). El Greco Museum, Toledo, Spain. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading (Track One): Proverbs 1:20-33

Creation Focus: Wisdom: “Repent” before doom as hurricane
Poetry in the Hebrew Bible, including the Psalms and wisdom writings such as this passage from Proverbs, does not rhyme words or sounds as English poetry does. Rather, it rhymes ideas. Go through each verse here: Wisdom, embodied as a powerful woman, shouts out to the city and all its inhabitants: Be wise! Embrace knowledge!” Each verse is divided into two lines that support each other: The idea expressed in each first line is reflected, explained, or expanded upon in the second. Ideas rhyme. Watch for this poetic technique in the Hebrew bible, and see how meaning grows when each line builds on another to strengthen ideas.

First Reading (Track Two): Isaiah 50:4-9a

Creation Focus: Prophets are attacked yet rely on God in obedience
What could be more important to a community than its teachers, whose words shape our growth and understanding? The Israelites understood this teacher, Isaiah’s so-called “Suffering Servant,” to represent their nation in exile, suffering and enslaved yet relying still on God. Christians later imagined an image of Christ in this figure who endures opposition, turns the other cheek, and keeps on teaching until the people hear. Speaking with the tongue of a teacher, the Servant shows us God’s way.

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 19

Creation Focus: The sun and stars, night and day, speak directly of God
“The heavens declare the glory of God!” This psalm of praise sings out the beauty of creation, imagining the sun and stars themselves exulting at the glory of God at work in the universe. Mirroring the first reading’s exhortation to hear God’s word, its verses urge us to rejoice in our hearts about God’s perfect law and teaching.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 116:1-8

Creation Focus: Keep faith in deliverance, do not lose hope
Like Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, the Psalmist, too, speaks from a place of sorrow, grief, and loss of hope. In this Psalm, traditionally understood as a hymn of thanksgiving for recovery from an illness, the Psalmist is filled with despair. Entangled in the cords of death, he called out, and God responded. Now, rescued from death’s grip, his tears are wiped dry and his feet no longer stumble. Walking again in the land of the living, his heart fills with love for God, who has heard his voice in supplication.

Second Reading: James 3:1-12


Creation Focus: Tongues cursing others pollute God’s earth
The teacher’s tongue may tell God’s way, but our tongues are tricky, small but powerful. This passage from James engages in delightful wordplay, likening our tongues to other small but strong things that can control forces beyond their size: A horse’s bridle, a ship’s rudder, a spark that starts a forest fire. Watch our tongues, James warns. Our tongues can bless, but tongues may curse, too, staining not only our bodies but setting afire the whole cycle of nature. We must use them wisely to praise and bless our brothers and sisters, not to express hurtful things.

Gospel: Mark 8:27-38


Creation Focus: Lose your life[style] to gain God’s salvation for all
We are more than midway through the six-month-long season after Pentecost now. Jesus and the apostles are about to turn south on a long journey toward Jerusalem and the Cross. First, though, Jesus engages them with a challenging question: “Who do you say that I am?” Some guess John the Baptist, Elijah, or a prophet, but Peter forthrightly declares Jesus the Messiah. Jesus then speaks of his coming passion and death, and when Peter objects, Jesus rebukes him and calls him “Satan!” This is a stern, challenging side of Jesus, who tells his followers to deny themselves, to take up their cross and follow him, knowing that those who want to save their life must lose it.

Season of Creation: Pray Sunday

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Sept. 1, 2024 (Pentecost 15B/Proper 17)

The Scribe Stood to Tempt Jesus (c.1886-1894), watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper by James Tissot (1836-1902). Brooklyn Museum, New York. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading (Track One): Song of Solomon 2:8-13

Creation Focus: Love of God received through nature.
Our Track One first readings now turn to the Hebrew Bible’s wisdom literature – books of thoughts and advice on wise and proper living. We begin this Sunday with a love poem from the Song of Solomon, a deeply romantic book that tradition attributes to King Solomon himself (although they were actually written centuries later). These verses sing of deep love between a woman and a man who has returned to her after a cold winter, using charming metaphors of nature and the seasons like these familiar verses, “The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

First Reading (Track Two): Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

Creation Focus: God’s rules are for living on the land.
Don’t do as we say. Do as we do. We hear this simple wisdom unveiled for us throughout Sunday’s readings. In our Track Two first reading last week, we looked on as an aging Joshua, facing the end of his life, called on the people to recommit to God’s covenant once they were established in the Promised Land. Now we page back to Deuteronomy to hear Moses in his last days, uttering a similar call to the people to renew their commitment to the law and teaching as they prepare to cross into the Promised Land. Moses assures the people that by passing God’s teaching down through the generations, they will earn the right to live in the land, and they will win the world’s respect for their wisdom and discernment.n the promised land, gaining the world’s respect for wisdom and discernment.

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10

Creation Focus: Beauty of creation as God’s anointing.
Following the Song of Solomon in the first reading, these snippets from Psalm 45 are framed as a love song, too, mustering metaphors of beautiful music and appealing scents. A noble song fashioned for a king on the occasion of his royal wedding, it praises the king as the fairest of men, from whose lips flow grace. Then the narrative turns to praise for God. Even above the king, God is the Holy One who has anointed and blessed the king with an enduring throne and a scepter of righteousness. God has anointed the king because God loves righteousness and hates iniquity, the psalm tells us. By carrying out God’s will, the monarch earns God’s blessings on earth.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 15

Creation Focus: The righteous as those who dwell on a holy mountain.
Mirroring the wisdom taught by Moses in the first reading, the Psalmist proclaims that those who live blamelessly and with righteousness and truth may earn God’s protection. The verses of Psalm 15 tell us how to do that: Be honest, be trustworthy, be fair; protect the innocent. Follow these ways, and you will abide upon God’s holy hill. Honesty, kindness, and love of neighbor all make a difference. The way we live matters to God.

Second Reading: James 1:17-27

Creation Focus: Creation is God’s good gift; look after it.
Tradition attributes the letter of James to the apostle identified as Jesus’s brother. Although the likely time of its writing late in the first century makes this appealing legend doubtful, the letter remains one of the New Testament’s strongest calls to the social gospel and the way that Jesus taught. In admonitions like “be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves,” and, later in the letter, “faith without works is dead,” it urges the reader to reach out as Christ’s hands in the world, to be righteous, to care for widows and orphans in their distress.

Gospel: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Creation Focus: Sustenance is God’s good gift for all.
Our six-week foray into Jesus’s extended dissertation on the bread of life in Chapter Six of John’s Gospel has come to its end, and we now return to Mark’s Gospel for the rest of this liturgical year. You might think for a moment that nothing has changed, though, as we once again find Jesus, now in Mark’s telling, jousting with a crowd of scribes and Pharisees. The law-abiding religious leaders challenged Jesus because they saw his disciples ignoring the strict ritual practice of washing before eating. In response, Jesus quotes the Prophet Isaiah, scorning those who honor God with their lips while their hearts are far away, thoughtlessly following ritual rather than living in the spirit of God’s laws. It is not eating that defiles us, Jesus proclaims, but the sins that come from our mouths and our hearts.