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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Feb. 19, 2024 (Lent 1B)

Jesus and the Tempter (c.1500), oil painting on panel by Juan de Flandes (c.1465-1519). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Click image to enlarge.)

First Reading: Genesis 9:8-17

God makes a covenant with Noah, promising never again to destroy all human and animal life in a vast flood, and placing a rainbow in the sky as a vivid reminder of this agreement. As Lent begins, our Lectionary readings for the season start with this, the first in a series of covenants that God will make with leading figures in the Hebrew Bible’s ancestral stories. These are binding agreements between God and the people; agreements that the prophets will hold up as the standard by which the people must live in order to inherit the Kingdom.

Psalm: Psalm 25:1-9

This Psalm of praise, one of many that tradition attributes to the hand of King David himself, asks for deliverance and protection from enemies and scheming foes. This is a recurring plea in the Psalms, one that may reflect ancient Israel’s hard-won status as a tiny nation surrounded by foes. As we sing this Psalm, we express the joy of holding up our hearts and souls with willing trust in God’s compassion and love. Even in the face of triumphant enemies, the Psalmist sings of praise, not fear, and the hope of God’s faithfulness to those who have made covenant to follow God’s ways.

Second Reading: 1 Peter 3:18-22

In this short passage from the first letter of Peter, the author builds on the themes of the first reading and psalm. The author reminds the people that they are now saved in the water of baptism, just as Noah and his family were saved in a world covered by water. Both saving acts are the work of God, but baptism is no mere bath that washes away dirt. It is, rather, an appeal to God – like a covenant – that provides a new beginning through the resurrection of Jesus, who now sits at God’s right hand as lord of all creation.

Gospel: Mark 1:9-15

“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” How many times recently have we heard these booming words from above? We heard them in Mark’s account of Jesus’s baptism at the beginning of Advent and again at the beginning of Epiphany. We heard them again last Sunday at the Transfiguration. And now here we are again as Lent begins. As we move from the Incarnation toward the Cross and the empty tomb, we repeatedly remember God’s declaration. Now we move on from the baptism scene to hear of Jesus’s temptation in the desert. Then, in Galilee after Herod has arrested John, Jesus begins proclaiming the Gospel in Galilee: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”