Lent 4C

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 30, 2025 (Lent 4C)

The Prodigal Son (

The Prodigal Son (1622), oil painting on panel by Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656). Alte Pinakothek, Munich. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Joshua 5:9-12

Fresh starts and new beginnings: These themes resonate in Sunday’s readings as we reach the midpoint of Lent. From the Israelites’ arrival at the Promised Land in the first reading to the Prodigal Son’s joyful return home in the Gospel, we remember that God stays with us through transition and change. In the first reading from Joshua, we see a people filled with joy. They have reached Canaan, the land of milk and honey. No longer reliant on manna for sustenance, they celebrate the end of 40 years in the desert with fresh bread made from the produce of the promised land.

Psalm: Psalm 32

Who hasn’t known the anguish of doing something wrong that hurt a loved one? An angry word flares. A careless act happens. And then we see that look of pain, a sob, and a burst of tears, and we feel anguish and guilt. At that point, there is just one thing to say: “I’m sorry.” When this simple response brings a smile and forgiveness, everything feels better. This is the reward of repentance: When we sin and step away from God, it hurts. But then, as we chant in this Psalm, God’s forgiveness and steadfast love can make us shout for joy.

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

There is tension in Paul’s second letter to the people of Corinth. The people of this Greek Christian community have been arguing with Paul and with each other. Paul, loving them in spite of it all, entreats them to be reconciled to God on behalf of Christ. Our new direction as Christians, Paul tells them, comes when we recognize Jesus not only as human but as Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah. In Christ, everything old has passed away. Everything has become new! Through Christ, God forgives all our trespasses and reconciles the world to God.

Gospel: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The story of the Prodigal Son is surely one of the most beloved parables, and it’s easy to grasp its meaning: God forgives us when we stray and then return. Even if we have been prodigally sinful, God welcomes us home with a father’s joy and abundant celebration. But there’s more to this textured story: Consider the older brother: Hurt because his good and faithful behavior earned him no reward, he is consoled by his father’s loyal, long-standing love. It’s also easy to forget the setting for this familiar story: Jesus told it in response to a crowd of scribes and Pharisees who were upset because Jesus welcomed tax collectors and sinners at his table.

Lent 3C

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 23, 2025 (Lent 3C)

Moses and the Burning Bush

Moses and the Burning Bush (1642-45), oil painting on canvas by Sébastien Bourdon (1616-1671). The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Exodus 3:1-15

As the theologian Marcus Borg famously wrote, God is both right here and out there: as near as our thoughts and as far as the stars. Sunday’s readings stretch our imagination with ideas of a transcendent God of mighty power. In our first reading from Exodus, we recall the ancestral story of God addressing a startled Moses from a flaming bush that burned but was never consumed. The people have suffered in slavery in Egypt long enough, God tells Moses, calling Moses – despite his protests of inadequacy – to lead the people out of Egypt and bring them to a promised land flowing with milk and honey.

Psalm: Psalm 63:1-8

We began Lent by recalling the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert, defying temptation and preparing for his ministry on Earth. Psalm 63 is set in a similar arid wilderness, a barren and dry land where there is no water. The Psalmist seeks God with a thirsty soul, aching not only for liquid refreshment but for God, whose lovingkindness is better than life itself. Through prayer, the Psalmist’s hunger is satisfied. Upheld by God’s strong hand, the poet sings for joy under the shadow of God’s wings.

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Paul, writing to the people of Corinth in a time when early Christians were still working out their relationship with Judaism, recalls Hebrew Bible stories in which Israelites were struck down for failing to keep God’s ways. Paul holds up these Israelites who strayed from their commitments as examples for the early Christians to consider when they felt that God was testing them with hard times. Learn from those ancestors, Paul urges. Be faithful, don’t stray, and know that when hard times test us, God will provide us strength.

Gospel: Luke 13:1-9

A group of people came to Jesus, worried about a group of Galileans whom Pilate had killed and 18 others who died when a tower at Siloam fell on them. Did these bad things happen because the victims had sinned? Absolutely not, Jesus tells them. God does not punish sin with suffering, Jesus declares, perhaps recalling the wisdom of Job. But, Jesus goes on, repentance defeats death, bringing forgiveness and eternal life. Like the gardener who defers cutting down a barren fig tree to nurture it in hope it will eventually bear fruit, we are to hope for forgiveness and another chance.

Lent 2C

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 16, 2025 (Lent 2C)

Christ and the Pharisees,

Christ and the Pharisees, from Das Plenarium (1517), hand-colored woodcut by Hans Leonhard Schäufelein (1480-1540). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Even in times of darkness and fear, hold on to hope and trust in God: This optimistic idea illuminates Sunday’s readings. In Sunday’s first reading, Abram is worried because he and his wife Sarai remain childless in old age. Will they have to adopt a slave child to receive the inheritance that God has promised? But God guides Abram through a dark and terrifying night and, in the new day, assures him that he and Sarai – who we will know as Abraham and Sarah – will begin a family that will inherit the promised land; a family as countless as the stars.

Psalm: Psalm 27

Psalm 27 resonates with the Genesis account of God’s covenant with Abraham: Even when we feel under attack, beset with dangers and real-life fears, we can place our confidence in God and ask for God’s protection. We sing of our trust in God, our light and salvation, whose strength is so great that nothing can stand against it. Yes, bad things sometimes do happen to good people. That is the way of our lives. But we ask God’s to show us the way and lead us on a level path, and we trust that God will be with us both in bad times and good.

Second Reading: Philippians 3:17-4:1

The people of the church in Philippi in northern Greece had endured much to embrace the Christian way. They wrestled with fear as they faced persecution by their enemies. But Paul – himself writing from prison in Rome – reassures them pastorally in words that might remind us of the Psalmist’s wisdom: Look to God, through Christ, for our salvation. Stand firm in our faith and find meaning in our lives by making every effort to live as Christ would have us live. Christ is the one who will transform us.

Gospel: Luke 13:31-35

Several friendly Pharisees warn Jesus that King Herod wants to kill him, and urge him to protect himself. But Jesus, calling Herod “that fox,” won’t change his chosen course, even if it will lead to death in the “city that kills the prophets.” But then this dark and foreboding passage turns comforting as Jesus describes himself as a mother hen protecting her brood under her wings. This nurturing, feminine image invites us to reflect on Jesus as a source of gentle motherly love, expanding our vision of a Christ for all humankind.

Lent 1C

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 9, 2025 (Lent 1C)

Christ Tempted by the Devil

Christ Tempted by the Devil (1818), oil painting on panel by John Ritto Penniman (1782-1841). Smithsonian American Art Museum. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11

During Lent, as we read in the Book of Common Prayer, Christians are invited “to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” Sunday’s Lectionary readings gently guide us into this season with reminders from Scripture that God loves us, protects us, and calls us to follow God’s way. Our first reading recalls an ancient harvest liturgy, when the people would tithe the land’s bounty in thanksgiving to God who led them out of slavery in Egypt and brought them to a rich and fruitful land.

Psalm: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

These verses that we chant in Sunday’s Psalm set the scene for the day’s Gospel: “He will command his angels concerning you … On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” This promise underscores the hopeful message of Psalm 91, and by extension the Gospel according to Matthew: Even when bad things happen – plague, injury, even attacks by lions and venomous serpents – we live in God’s shadow. God is with us when we are in trouble. God will answer when we call.

Second Reading: Romans 10:8b-13

Paul’s pastoral advice to the early Christian community in Rome, a mixed body of Jewish and pagan Christians, continues the theme of Sunday’s readings. In the Psalm, we acknowledged our trust in God’s protection. Here, Paul reminds the people of the infant Roman church that the pathway to salvation opens when we accept Jesus and the Resurrection. In the first reading, we recalled that our spiritual ancestors were foreigners in a strange land, held as slaves in Egypt. Now Paul makes it clear that there is no Jew or Greek, no insider or outsider in the way of Jesus: We are all together in one God for all.

Gospel: Luke 4:1-13

Immediately following his baptism by John in the Jordan, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to fast and pray for 40 days, a period that is reflected in the 40 days of Lent. Famished at the end of his long fast, Jesus meets the devil, who tests him with the suggestion that if he is the Son of God, he could turn stones into food. Failing that, the devil tempts Jesus again with visions of power and glory if only he would turn from God. Jesus resists each temptations, warning the devil not to put God to the test. The devil then leaves him “until an opportune time.” In the verses that follow this passage, Jesus goes directly to his hometown synagogue where he will proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.

Ash Wednesday

Thoughts on the Lectionary readings for March 5, 2025 (Ash Wednesday)

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday (1866), oil painting on panel by Charles de Groux (1825-1870). Stedelijk Museum Wuyts-Van Campen en Baron Caroly, Liere, Belgium. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Joel 2:1-2,12-17

Ash Wednesday is the first of the forty days of Lent, named for the custom of placing blessed ashes on the foreheads of worshipers at Ash Wednesday services. The ashes are a sign of penitence and a reminder that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Our readings begin with a passage from the short Book of Joel, who may have prophesied after the return from exile to Jerusalem. Much of Joel’s message deals with the people’s prayerful response to a plague of locusts, setting a scene of penitence and sacrifice for us to ponder as Lent begins.

Alternate First Reading: Isaiah 58:1-12

Lent is the liturgical season set aside for acts of devotion and sacrifice as we reflect on the wrongs that we have done and recognize that life is short. In this alternate first reading for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the Prophet Isaiah reminds us that public demonstrations of fasting and prayer, sackcloth and ashes are not enough to please God. We should show our righteousness, rather, in service and love of neighbor. The prophet reminds us of God’s call to oppose injustice: free the oppressed, feed the hungry, house the homeless, and clothe the naked.

Psalm: Psalm 103

God made us all from dust, the Psalmist declares. God knows well that we are all only dust. We are human: broken and sinful, often wicked. Yet God’s compassion and mercy vastly exceed God’s anger. God does not punish us with the wrath that we might fear that our sins deserve. Rather, the psalm goes on, God shows a mercy wider than the world itself, forgiving our sins and welcoming us in a parent’s warm embrace.

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Much of the content in Paul’s less familiar second letter to the people of Corinth is devoted to trying to work out a disagreement he is having with the people of this contentious little Greek church. In this passage, Paul speaks of reconciliation. He enumerates the many pains that he has endured as a servant of God. Then he urges the people to accept God’s grace and work together in the Christ who reconciled us with God by taking human form and dying for us.

Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

We land in the middle of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount in this Ash Wednesday Gospel. We hear him teaching the crowd how to practice almsgiving, prayer, fasting, and self-denial of worldly pleasures: A catalog of actions that have become traditional Lenten practices. In words that resonate with the alternate first reading from Isaiah, Jesus urges the people to practice humble prayer: Shun hypocrisy. Don’t show off. Keep your charity, your prayers, and your fasting to yourself. Don’t brag about your fast. Don’t hoard fragile, transient earthly riches, but store in heaven the treasures that last.

Palm / Passion Sunday B

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 24, 2024 (Palm / Passion Sunday B)

The Denial of Saint Peter

The Denial of Saint Peter (c.1607-1643), oil painting on canvas by Adam de Coster (c,1586-1643). Whitfield Fine Art, London. (Click image to enlarge.)

Liturgy of the Palms B

Gospel: Mark 11:1-11

Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday were once celebrated on separate Sundays, but the celebrations were combined in the time of ecumenism that followed Vatican II. As a result, we take a quick and startling turn in the course of Sunday’s worship. First we hear of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding a donkey and greeted as a king by throngs spreading their cloaks and leafy branches in his way, shouting “Hosanna!” And then, just a little later in the liturgy, we are yanked through a shocking reversal as those same crowds angrily shout “Crucify him!” This contrast sets a tone for Holy Week as we follow Jesus to the cross: God is always with us, in joy and in sorrow.

Alternate Palm Sunday Gospel: John 12:12-16

All four Gospels tell of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, riding a modest mount and hearing the acclaim of crowds. But each Gospel tells a slightly different story. John’s version, for example, is the only one that explicitly declares Jesus the King of Israel, and the only one that tells us the disciples did not understand what was going on. But all four versions share the image of crowds triumphantly waving branches – in John’s version, explicitly described as palms – and the crowd’s joyous shouts of “Hosanna!”

Psalm: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

On Palm Sunday as we chant this ancient hymn of celebration and praise – traditionally titled “A Song of Victory” – imagine a joyous crowd approaching the Temple, clapping hands and singing in celebration of the Lord their God, whose steadfast love endures forever. Its words of joyous praise for God’s works and God’s mercy foreshadow the words we sing in the Great Thanksgiving as our Eucharistic Prayer begins: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! … Hosanna in the highest.”

Liturgy of the Passion B

First Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a

These familiar verses from Isaiah introduce us to the prophet’s familiar vision of the Suffering Servant. These evocative verses prophesy a servant leader who who would receive the enemy’s blows on behalf of the people in exile, and who would eventually guide them back home to Jerusalem. We must respect the original intent, but it is hard for Christian readers to ponder these verses without imagining parallels with Jesus, our messiah and king, who also suffered for us and taught us to give our backs and turn our cheeks to those who strike us.

Psalm: Psalm 31:9-16

Perhaps the Psalmist had Isaiah’s Suffering Servant in mind in framing this Psalm of lament, with its litany of sorrow, distress, grief, sighing, misery, scorn, horror, and dread. The speaker suffers. His neighbors scheme. They plot his death. It is hard to imagine a thought more pitiful than “I am as useless as a broken pot.” Yet amid all this misery, hope glows like the sun breaking through clouds: Trust in God, place our faith in God’s love, and wait to be saved.

Second Reading: Philippians 2:5-11

We might imagine parallels with the Suffering Servant in Paul’s writing, too, as he tells here of Jesus’s death on the cross. We accept Jesus as both fully human and fully divine, and all the Gospels show us glimpses of a Jesus who knew his stature and God-sent mission. Yet Paul, possibly quoting a very early Christian hymn, speaks poetically of a Jesus who willingly set aside his divinity, his equality with God – “emptying himself” – to bear the horrific pain of crucifixion as a vulnerable, frightened human. Jesus took on the full weight of all that suffering to show us the true exaltation of God’s love, calling us only to respond with love for God and our neighbor.

Gospel: Mark 14:1-15:47

Finally we come to Mark’s account of Jesus’ passion and death. The palm branches and hosannas are only memories now. We hear the dark, painful way of the Cross as we prepare to walk through Holy Week with Jesus. Watch closely as we see first Jesus’ followers, and then even his friends, slip quietly away, deserting him, leaving at the end only those few most close to him, and a Roman centurion – a pagan, a soldier of the hated empire – whose faith showed him the light and thus opens the way to us all.

Lent 5B

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 17, 2024 (Lent 5B)

The Prophet Jeremiah

The Prophet Jeremiah (1508-1512), fresco by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). Sistine Chapel ceiling, Vatican City, Rome. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34

The consistent pattern of our Lenten Lectionary readings continues as Palm Sunday and Holy Week draw near: In the Gospels we have followed Jesus and his disciples toward Jerusalem. Our Hebrew Bible readings have told of God’s covenants with the people. The first reading for the Fifth Sunday of Lent draws from the Prophet Jeremiah. The prophet laments that the chosen people have broken the covenant promise to walk in God’s ways that their ancestors made at Mount Sinai. Now Jeremiah tells of a new covenant that is to come. This one will be permanent, he says. It is not only written on stone tablets but directly on their hearts.

Psalm: Psalm 51:1-13

Legend tells us that King David himself wrote this psalm. In a powerful narrative, the prophet Nathan had confronted David after David sent his general, Uriah, to die in battle so he could take Uriah’s beautiful wife Bathsheba for himself. In poetic words that reflect covenantal ideas, the Psalmist pours out David’s shame and grief. He admits to wickedness, makes no excuses, but begs for God’s mercy and forgiveness to restore in him a clean heart. A heart on which God, perhaps, can write God’s covenant of love.

Alternate Psalm: Psalm 119:9-16

Psalm 119, the longest of all the Psalms, carries a message of covenant throughout its many verses: Those who follow God’s laws and teaching, modeling their lives on Torah so as to walk in God’s ways, will reap rewards. These verses, “With my lips will I recite all the judgments of your mouth,” seem to reflect God’s response in Jeremiah’s call to prophesy. When Jeremiah said, “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy,” God answered, “you shall speak whatever I command you. … Now I have put my words in your mouth.”

Second Reading: Hebrews 5:5-10

The Letter to the Hebrews, scholars believe, was not addressed to a specific congregation. Rather, it was a broad appeal to formerly Jewish Christians who had returned to their original faith late in the first century to avoid the persecution falling on Christians by Rome. Its author argues that Jesus, as Christ, follows in the great tradition of Jewish high priests. That line goes back through millennia to Melchizedek, the ancient king and great high priest who had blessed Abram before God offered the first covenant to Abram and Sarai. As Jesus has become the source of eternal salvation who intercedes on our behalf forever, the unknown author writes, there is no longer any need for priestly sacrifice.

Gospel: John 12:20-33

It is not clear from John’s Gospel whether Jesus actually did consent to meet with the Greek visitors who told Philip that they wanted to see Jesus. John places them in this passage, perhaps, to emphasize that Jesus will draw in all people: Jew and Greek, men and women, slave and free; everyone. Now, as John’s narrative moves toward Jesus’s last Passover, his passion and death, Jesus has words for the world and the ages to hear: Just as Jesus must die to bear the fruit of salvation through his resurrection, we are the seeds of faith, called to grow in discipleship. Do we lie fallow and die, or do we grow and bloom where we are planted, bearing fruit as we follow and serve Christ?

Lent 4B

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 10, 2024 (Lent 4B)

Moses and the Brazen Serpent

Moses and the Brazen Serpent (1618-1620), oil painting on canvas by Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641). Museo del Prado, Madrid. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Numbers 21:4-9

Sunday’s first reading recounts the Book of Numbers’ bewildering account of God sending deadly poisonous snakes to punish an ungrateful people – and a curative bronze serpent that seems suspiciously like an idol. This might strike us as an ancient legend, easily ignored. But then John’s Gospel shows Jesus citing those same verses to set the context for the famous words in John 3:16, which we will hear in Sunday’s Gospel! This makes the serpent story a little more difficult to ignore. Here’s a way to internalize it: When you think you’re surrounded by snakes, look up. Remember that God is with us.

Psalm: Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

The theme that we hear in this passage from Psalm 107 offers soothing balm after the shock of venomous snakes and bronze serpents in the reading from Numbers. The Psalmist invites us to repent, to turn back, to give thanks for God’s mercy with shouts of joy. Even when we are foolish, when we rebel, when we sin, when we are afraid, these verses offer reassurance: As soon as we cry out for God, God will respond to us as beloved children, granting us healing and salvation.

Second Reading: Ephesians 2:1-10

This letter, likely written to the people of Ephesus and other communities by a later Christian leader writing in Paul’s name, imagines something just about as frightening and potentially deadly as a passel of serpents: A shadowy spirit, a “ruler of the power of the air,” stands ready to lure those who prefer passion and the flesh to a saving life in Christ. Like those healed by gazing at Moses’ bronze serpent, those who follow Christ are saved by God’s mercy and raised up by the gift of grace through Jesus. In words that would inspire some reformers a millennium and a half later, the author of Ephesians declares that we are saved by grace only, not by anything that we do to try to earn salvation.

Gospel: John 3:14-21

“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.” For many Christians, this week’s lessons could start and finish right there with John 3:16. But wait! Did Jesus just begin by comparing himself to Moses’ bronze serpent? This passage picks up in the middle of Jesus’s conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus, who came to visit him by night. Surely Jesus is teaching from the Torah, with which both he and Nicodemus would have been intimately familiar; Numbers is his text. We cannot take John 3:16 out of its context without reading the verses that come before and after. John makes clear that we all have power to choose between darkness and the light. Just as God provided the Israelites a way to repent and be healed, so a loving God offers healing grace to all.

Lent 3B

em>Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 3, 2024 (Lent 3B)

Christ driving the money-changers from the Temple

Christ driving the money-changers from the Temple (c.1570), oil painting on canvas by El Greco (1541-1614). Minneapolis Institute of Art. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Exodus 20:1-17

So far in Lent we have heard the ancient stories of God’s covenantal promises to Noah and Abraham. Now we come to the great covenant with Moses and the people in the desert at Mount Sinai. God promises that the people will become a holy nation, that they will live and prosper in the promised land. In return, the people agree to walk in God’s way, making a covenant that they will live in accord with God’s commandments. Now they hear those commandments uttered for the first time, echoing over the throng as God’s thunderous voice shakes the mountain. These ten simple principles sum up the way in which the people shall live, detailing how they are to love God and love each other.

Psalm: Psalm 19

“The heavens declare the glory of God.” This familiar hymn of praise and thanksgiving sings in exultation at the beauty and wonder of all God’s creation. In beautiful poetic language it shouts with joy about God’s gift to all the people of the world and to all the span of the universe. And within that creation, the hymn rings on, God’s laws and statutes – the great commandments – give us wisdom and joy and lead us to righteousness.

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Paul’s first letter to the people of Corinth in northern Greece is listed among his greatest epistles. Throughout its 16 chapters we see him offering loving pastoral advice to a distant community that has been splitting into factions over a variety of issues. In this passage taken from near the beginning, Paul clearly expresses the overarching theme of this letter: The Cross unites us as one! We may appear foolish to both Jews and Gentiles for worshiping as God a man executed on the brutal Roman cross, a symbol of pain, shame and degradation. But their opinion doesn’t matter, Paul writes,because we prefer God’s “foolishness” to mere human wisdom. We celebrate God’s weakness over the limited power that humans consider strength.

Gospel: John 2:13-22

For the remaining Sundays of Lent we turn from Mark to John’s Gospel, beginning with the familiar story of Jesus throwing the money-changers out of the Temple. This narrative appears in all four Gospels, but curiously, while Matthew, Mark and Luke all place it at the beginning of Holy Week, in John we find it near the beginning of the Gospel, during an earlier trip to Jerusalem for Passover that none of the others mention. Moreover, John alone tells of Jesus not merely throwing over the money changers’ tables but fashioning a whip of cords to lash them in his anger at their exploiting the poor in the name of God. Then Jesus foreshadows his own passion and death, likening his own body to the Temple and declaring that he will “rise up” three days after his body’s destruction.

Lent 2B

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Feb. 25, 2024 (Lent 2B)

Abraham’s Journey from Ur to Canaan

Abraham’s Journey from Ur to Canaan. Oil on canvas (1850), by József Molnár (1821-1899). Hungarian National Gallery. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Our first reading this week turns to another of the key Hebrew Bible covenants between God and God’s chosen people. This time God calls Abram and Sarai and tells them to go to a new land at their great age; Abram is 99 and they have had no children yet. They will be given new names – Abraham and Sarah – and in turn for accepting this call, God promises that they and their offspring will yield a great multitude of nations, and that God will be with their offspring forever. In contrast with God’s unconditional covenant with Noah that we heard last week, this covenant is reciprocal: In order for their offspring to gain the Promised Land (a promise made in the verses that our Sunday reading skips over), they and their descendants must “walk before God and be blameless.”

Psalm: Psalm 22:22-30

The theme of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah, through their grandson Jacob, the son of their son Isaac, echoes in Sunday’s Psalm portion. The Psalmist exults in the eternal nature of that covenant with Jacob (whom God later renamed Israel), and calls on all of Israel’s offspring to serve God, because as a result of Abraham’s covenant they will be known as God’s own forever. Even now the priest echoes similar words in every baptism, while those being welcomed into the household of God are anointed with blessed oil.

Second Reading: Romans 4:13-25

Paul, too, evokes the eternal nature of God’s promise to Abraham’s descendants in this passage from Romans. He adds something new, too: He reaches out to include Gentile Christians within God’s promise. While Abraham’s descendants received God’s covenant through the law, Gentiles who become Christians now receive it through their new faith, Paul writes. Seeking to reconcile a faith community in Rome that included both Jewish and Gentile Christians, Paul assures them that they all are now children of Abraham and Sarah, through faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Gospel: Mark 8:31-38

In the verses just before this, when Jesus had asked his disciples who they think Jesus is, some guessed that he was John the Baptist. Some guessed Elijah, and others imagined him as one of the prophets. Peter, though, boldly declared, “You are the Messiah!” Surely, based on Torah’s tradition, they assumed that the Messiah would come to wage war, defeat their hated Roman overlords, and win Israel’s freedom. Jesus, though, warns that his way is not like that. He tells them that he will face rejection, punishment and death before rising again after three days. This is not at all what Peter wants to hear, but his protests earn him a startling response from Jesus: “Get behind me, Satan!” If you want to follow Jesus, he tells them, you must deny yourself. Take up your cross. Prepare to give your life in order to save it.