Lent 2 - Genesis 15.13-16

In the midst of God's starry promise to Abraham we miss hearing God also foretelling Abraham about the pain of slavery that is in front of his beloved family and the promise that God will be moving even through that pain.  As we continue walking through Lent, we need to hear the reality that promise and pain are always interspersed, and that God is with us in both.  Abraham clings to the promise of the starry night and clings to the promise that God will always lead the people.

Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgement on the nation that they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.’ - Genesis 15.13-16

Image: Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890. Starry Night, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55396 [retrieved March 15, 2019]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.

Lent 1 - Psalm 91

A few verses of Psalm 91 get left out of the psalmody for Sunday, but two verses of Psalm 91 never appear in the Revised Common Lectionary.

⁷ A thousand may fall at your side,
   ten thousand at your right hand,
   but it will not come near you. 
⁸ You will only look with your eyes
   and see the punishment of the wicked. 

I suppose the lectionary committee was reluctant to call upon God that the wicked would be destroyed, but I wonder if they were also reluctant to hear the promise about thousands falling but it not coming near us.  In our world of chaos and confusion, where death seems to stalk unexpectedly in worship places and stadiums and schools and concerts, that may be a difficult versse to hear.  BUt it may make it all the more important to cling to.  In the midst of mindless pain and hurting, we still trust that God in Jesus has done something about it and is doing something about it.  God will not leave us defenseless forever and the wicked will not always win the day.

Image:	Guardian Angel, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56823 [retrieved March 15, 2019]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antonsplatz_22.JPG.

Ash Wednesday - Matthew's Lord's Prayer

Whe does the Ash Wednesday Gospel reading skip the Lord's Prayer?

If Lent is in part about the discipline of prayer, then we ought to be learning how to pray from Jesus himself.  This one is a flat out miss by the RCL team.  In fact, Matthew's Lord's Prayer appears no where in the lectionary, and Luke's version gets hidden in the middle of summer.  Surely we ought to hear the Scripture that gives us the prayer that we pray each time the Church gathers.

And why don't we get many ash readings on Ash Wednesday?

Here are some that ought to make the cut: Jonah 3, Job 2 and 42, and Esther 4.

Transfiguration

Transfiguration always provides lovely readings, but this year, we heard the story of Moses' veiled face after seeing the glory of God.  But the lectionary never gives us the story of Moses actually seeing the glory of God (except as a semi-continuous option, which you will never catch me, or anyone else who believes that Jesus is the center of Scripture, using).  That passage would be lovely to hear on Transfiguration or during Holy Week or even on Easter itself.  To know that even Moses is only granted to see God's backside means something terribly important for our preaching and teaching, and reminds all of us that we can only see the divine derierre.  We should never pretend to know more than God's backside revealed to us in the Crucified One.

 Moses said to the Lord, ‘See, you have said to me, “Bring up this people”; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, “I know you by name, and you have also found favour in my sight.” Now if I have found favour in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favour in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.’ He said, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ And he said to him, ‘If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favour in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.’

 The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favour in my sight, and I know you by name.’ Moses said, ‘Show me your glory, I pray.’ And he said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, “The Lord”; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But’, he said, ‘you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.’ And the Lord continued, ‘See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.’ - Exodus 33.12-23

Image:	Hand of God, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55257[retrieved March 6, 2019]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hand_gottes.jpg.

Epiphany 7 - 1 Corinithians 15.39-41

The lectionary skips over a few verses inside the reading from 1 Corinthians this past Sunday (Epiphany 7).  The passage doesn't read too terribly with the verses missing, but the worshipper misses Paul providing evidence for how different beings bear a different glory from each other, and indeed heavenly bodies do too.  There is a dazzling variety of glory in the world, all of it unique to its own way of glory, and all of it glorious as God has made it to be.

1 Corinthians 15.39-41

Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.

Such talk of glory from the Bible's leading theologian of the cross seems strange, but Paul is offering an image of the abundant, though broken, glory with which God has created the world. Paul's words here in 1 Corinthians help to make fuller sense of Paul's words in 2 Corinthians, that the glory of the Gospel has caused the glory of the Law to pass away, and that we are being transformed from "one degree of glory to another" (1 Corinthians 3.18).