Does anyone else feel like we just kept reading the same lesson over and over today? Many know that the lectionary pulls together readings so that we have an overarching theme, but this almost feels like someone made an exact copy or something. Most of us previously have heard the Gospel beatitudes, more on that in a second, but we seem to have them in repetition in Jeremiah. We even have the same message in the psalm! There are some subtle differences that are worth noting, but it very much feels like, “alright already, we got it.” There is this strident dualism in these readings that seems like a ball game, volleying back and forth between good and bad, blessed and cursed… It is worth noting that reading from Jeremiah has a bit more to say as to what causes us as people to just not do right. In a…

Both the Gospel passage and the passage from Isaiah today give depictions of people who are faced squarely with God almighty – one in a vision and one in the form of the Word made flesh. The responses are remarkably similar in each. In both cases, the person (Isaiah with the heavenly vision of God’s hem in the temple and seraphim, and Peter with the overwhelming catch of fish in the Gospel) is overwhelmed and gob smacked. Immediately for both individuals there is a feeling of unworthiness. Isaiah speaks of being from a sinful people, with sinful lips. Peter also seeks to put distance between himself and Jesus. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” As a modern people, we have a hard time talking about sin. I think understandably we don’t like to think less of ourselves. But for our purposes today, let’s just say…

I am sure you have heard it said a bunch of times, that “Fear not” is what God says most often in the Bible, and in fact, that’s probably true. As is often the case with calls from God, like Jeremiah’s, God usually interrupts someone in whatever they were doing, God gives marching orders, the person resists, and then God insists, reassures, and empowers. We know that for the most part, fear is not bad in and of itself. Fear isn’t infidelity or evil. Fear keeps us from being harmed. But, excessive fear is when we allow the avoidance of evil to trump the pursuit of the good. I’ll say that again— excessive fear is when we allow the avoidance of evil to trump the pursuit of the good. Our overwhelming fears need to be overwhelmed by bigger and better things. This can sound almost trite, almost as trite as…

“So, let’s talk about misunderstandings.” I would say that generally in American Christian culture, there is a huge misunderstanding or misreading of the Old Testament. The Old Testament lessons for this Sunday (what we read from Nehemiah and psalm 19) illumine this misunderstanding, frankly because the lessons share an unexpected joyousness about the law. As Christians, we probably have Paul, or at least a misinterpretation of Paul’s writings, to thank for a misunderstanding that the law is a burden. The covenant of the Old Testament was not designed, as many would believe, with the idea of a mean nasty God imposing a law, but instead, the law was a gift from God that serves to restrain evil, to convict sin, and to aid our understanding of God’s will. Then, at the time of Nehemiah, at time of the psalm, at the time of Jesus, and of Paul, (and now, my…

This second Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany also is considered “ordinary time”, just like after the Feast of the Pentecost, primarily because we are back to counting time. However, the stories after the Epiphany have in common a focus on dramatic manifestations of God’s power. On this particular Sunday, the commonality among the lessons is this dramatic manifestation of God’s power regardless of what state of affairs in which we find ourselves. The dramatic manifestations find a home firmly in our very human situations. This Sunday’s Gospel is familiar to almost everyone, even though it appears only in the Gospel of John, and even though we only hear it read in church every three years. I think the familiarity is there because it is in the social fabric of our wider culture… who hasn’t heard of turning water into wine? Our human situation, although it has much room…

Today on this first Sunday after the Epiphany, we commemorate the Baptism of our Lord, the Gospel story we just heard. We are in year C of the lectionary and so most of the Gospel readings will come from Luke’s Gospel. Granted, pretty much every Christmas Eve we hear Jesus’s birth story as told by Luke. This year we have also heard the birth narrative of John the Baptist, and the Advent readings contain John out in the wilderness baptizing people for the forgiveness of their sins. Actually, from the beginning of the liturgical year at Advent 1, we have been back and forth in the first few chapters of Luke. This back and forth that our lectionary does among the first few chapters of Luke is a tad ironic particularly since the opening lines from the Gospel according to Luke read, “Since many have undertaken to set down an…