Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for Oct. 6, 2019

First Reading (Track One): Lamentations 1:1-6

Cries of suffering and lamentation echo through Sunday’s readings, confronting us with some disturbing metaphors and images that we may find difficult to consider, even in words attributed to Jesus.

Perhaps our lesson this week is not to bottle up sad, hurt and angry feelings but to meditate on how we can use them to learn and grow. Our Track One first reading comes from Lamentations, a short book that was probably written in exile in Babylon. These verses poetically imagine the ruins of Jerusalem as a weeping woman sadly remembering happier times. Her princes are weak, her children captive. Her foes have won. Her enemies prosper and she fears that God brought this suffering on the people because of her wrongdoing.

First Reading (Track Two): Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4

Does Habbakuk’s name sound familiar? If not, that may be because this Track Two first reading is his only appearance in the entire three-year Lectionary cycle of Sunday readings. Habbakuk lived nearly 700 years before Jesus and, like many of the prophets, warned of the destruction and exile of Jerusalem. But this is a prophet with a difference. Unlike most of the prophets who hear God’s word and carry it on to humanity at God’s command, Habbakuk shouts his own warnings, then complains that even God doesn’t seem to be paying attention. God then instructs the prophet: Write your prophecy down. Make it so plain that a runner passing by can read it without slowing down. Then be patient, be just, and wait for God.

Psalm (Track One): Lamentations 3:19-26

Perhaps to provide preachers the option of avoiding the horrifying verse of Psalm 137 (see below) in which the Israelites celebrate smashing the enemy’s children on rocks, the Lectionary offers another passage from Lamentations as a Psalm-like reading in the traditional two-line verse form of biblical Hebrew poetry. In these verses from the third chapter, the tone of deep sorrow continues at the beginning. But then the language turns from pain to hope, for God’s steadfast love is unceasing and God’s mercy never ends. God is good to those who wait in quiet patience.

Alternate Psalm (Track One): Psalm 137

This ancient hymn of lamentation over the destruction of Jerusalem places the Psalmist in exile, “by the rivers of Babylon,” weeping over the lost city and temple and, in words that remain a vivid part of the Passover Seder, vowing never to forget Jerusalem. The verses then turn dark and horrifying, though, and we’re likely to react with visceral shock at the idea of Judah’s warriors joyously smashing innocent babies on the rocks. What can we possibly gain from reading these awful verses? Perhaps we are meant to see ourselves at humanity’s worst moments, and recognize how badly we can behave when hurt and frustration tempt us to lash out in anger.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 37:1-10

Sunday’s Track Two psalm fits well with God’s response to Habakkuk’s in the First Reading. The Psalmist calls us to trust in God, continue living in hope even when things aren’t going well. When the world appears dark and it seems that evil surrounds us, the Psalmist reminds us, we can put our faith in God and wait for God with patience and confident trust. Don’t lash back or strike out in anger. These things only lead to evil. But wait patiently, follow God’s ways, and we’ll be rewarded.

Second Reading: 2 Timothy 1:1-14

Written decades after the death of Paul, this short pastoral letter fondly imagines the evangelist writing from prison to his beloved disciple Timothy. It likely came at a time around the end of the first century, when the young church was suffering persecution. In that context, it is not surprising that its themes remind us of the Lamentations readings and Psalm. Hold onto your faith, even when times are hard; rely on the grace of God given through Jesus.

Gospel: Luke 17:5-10

In Luke’s long account of Jesus and the disciples’ journey toward Jerusalem , Jesus seems to toss one challenge after another to them – and to us. Sunday’s Gospel is no exception, with its apparently casual assumption that Jesus’ follower would routinely load down a slave with heavy work but never invite the slave to sit down at the table, much less bother to thank the slave. Perhaps we can argue that slavery was routinely accepted in that era, but it still feels uncomfortable at best to hear these ideas from the mouth of Jesus. Perhaps we have to gloss over this difficulty and consider the text as another of Jesus’ attention-getting metaphors showing that it is not easy to follow him. Jesus calls us to be humble, vulnerable, and, metaphorically at least, as obedient as slaves when we are called to follow him.

What are “Track 1” and “Track 2”?
During the long green season after Pentecost, there are two tracks (or strands) each week for Old Testament readings. Within each track, there is a Psalm chosen to accompany the particular lesson.
The Revised Common Lectionary allows us to make use of either of these tracks, but once a track has been selected, it should be followed through to the end of the Pentecost season, rather than jumping back and forth between the two strands.
For more information from LectionaryPage.net, click here.

Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Sept. 11, 2016

First Reading: Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Last week’s reading from Jeremiah showed us a cosmic potter breaking an unsatisfactory vessel and starting it over, an image of God’s anguish over a chosen people gone badly wrong. Now we page back in the prophet’s book to find a righteously angry God who might remind us of a loving parent brought to rope’s end by misbehaving children. “My people are foolish … they are stupid children … they have no understanding.” God’s anger, the prophet warns the people, can have deadly consequences.

First Reading (Track Two): Exodus 32:7-14

When Moses was high up on the cloudy top of Mount Sinai, the people below were afraid, so they created and worshiped an idol, a golden calf. As today’s reading begins, we see a righteously angry God, who is prepared to kill all the people and start over again, making a new nation not from the descendants of Abraham but those who will descend from Moses. But when Moses pushes back, recalling God’s covenant with Abraham’s family and their long journey out of Egypt, God shows mercy and relents.

Psalm 14

Today’s Psalm clearly echoes Jeremiah’s vision of God’s impatient anger with a troublesome people. Jeremiah’s angry words about stupidity and foolishness are repeated in the Psalmist’s scorn for fools, corrupt people and doers of abominable deeds. Yet at the end, the Psalm gives hope: God will ultimately restore their fortunes amid gladness and rejoicing.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 51: 1-10

Today’s Psalm imagines the guilt and shame of King David, who had sent his loyal soldier Uriah to certain death in battle in order to cover up David’s adulterous affair with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. This Psalm imagines David’s repentant cry after the prophet Nathan shocked the king into recognizing his great sin.

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

The two short letters to Timothy near the end of the New Testament are understood as letters of pastoral advice. Scholars nowadays recognize them as having been written in Paul’s name generations later, in a second-century time when the early church was becoming more institutionalized and conservative. Nevertheless, today’s reading seems fully consistent with the original Paul’s love of Jesus as our savior who offers us eternal life.

Gospel: Luke 15:1-10

Luke’s gospel makes us think, with two short parables that liken God’s care for “sinners” to people who lose important things – a sheep from a flock, and a silver coin. The search for each lost item is intent and fierce. When the objects are found, the abundant joy of thanksgiving seems almost over the top considering the size of the loss … until we measure it in love. Turn the page at the end of this reading and we find yet another familiar story of loss, recovery and celebration: The Prodigal Son.

Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Sunday, Sept. 1, 2013. 

First Reading: Jeremiah 2:4-13
Jeremiah, who had resisted God’s call to prophesy because he feared that he was too young for such a responsibility, now assumes the prophet’s mantle and imagines God in an almost anguished reverie, lamenting to God’s self about what could have gone wrong with the chosen people. Did they find some wrong in God that led them to waste their lives on worthless things? More in sorrow than in anger, it seems, God reflects that God’s own people have not only forsaken God’s “living water” but instead built “cracked cisterns” that won’t hold what they need to slake their spiritual thirst.

First Reading: (Alternative reading) Proverbs 25:6-7
When Jesus offers his simple advice to banquet-goers in today’s Gospel from Luke, might he have been remembering this more ancient wisdom from Proverbs? Both Luke and Matthew sum up this idea in almost identical words, “… all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Psalm: Psalm 81:1,10-16
The theme of this hymn seems to flow naturally from today’s Jeremiah reading. The Psalmist shouts in joy for God’s strength, and like Jeremiah, imagines God speaking of having brought the people out of slavery in Egypt, fed them and protected them, only to see their stubborn hearts turn to their own ways and ignore God’s commands. “O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!”

Psalm: (Alternative reading) Psalm 112
Understood in the context of today’s lessons, the lesson in this Psalm is clear, and it clearly restates God’s covenant with the people: Follow God’s commandments and be blessed, and remember that the sum of that commandment is to be righteous and just, serve your neighbor, share your wealth and provide for the poor. Secure in God, there is no need to live in fear.

Second Reading: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Love one another as God loves us, and remember to do good, to share with one another, and to show hospitality (as we are told that the patriarch Abraham hospitably received visiting angels). Today’s reading from Hebrews offers simple pastoral advice on living as God would have us live, and we might hear it as reflecting Jesus’s call in Matthew 25, “just as you did it to one of the least of these … you did it to me.”

Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-14
At first this reading seems like useful social advice from Jesus: Don’t assume that the seat of honor is saved for you, or you’ll be embarrassed when the host tells you to move down. Better to take a humble place and then bask in a happy glow as the host comes and escorts you upward. But the words, as Jesus’s teachings so often do, prove to have a deeper meaning: Next time, give a banquet for the poor, the disabled and the oppressed. They can’t repay you as your rich friends might, but your reward from God will be plentiful. So again Jesus commands us to care for “the least of these.”