Second Sunday of Advent - Year C

This week's Lectionary readings are:

• Baruch 5:1-9 or Malachi 3:1-4
• Luke 1:68-79
• Philippians 1:3-11
• Luke 3:1-6

I find these readings to be much less troubling than last week's. The idea of being forgiven and going forward in righteousness and peace is wonderful. The idea that love should lead us to learn to be (and act) more righteous, again, wonderful. I will say that I am generally of the "God helps them who help themselves school", but I do believe that when it comes to saving us from our enemies, we should let God help us and not take things into our own hands past the point of resistance. One of the biggest things that leads me away from faith is what other people do in the name of faith - wars, genocide, etc.
Image Source:
Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55233 [retrieved December 9, 2012].

First Sunday of Advent - Year C

This week's Lectionary readings are:

• Jeremiah 33:14-16
• Psalm 25:1-10
• 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
• Luke 21:25-36

This week marks the beginning of Advent and the beginning of a new Christian / Lectionary Year. This year's readings focus on the Gospel of Luke.
Advent is styled as a time of waiting, but not waiting for the birth of Jesus, rather waiting for the return of Jesus. Personally, I find most focus on the idea of the Second Coming to be problematic. To me, the really amazing thing about Jesus is how he lived his life, feeding the hungry, comforting the sick, etc; not the fact that at some unknown time in the future ("no one knows the day or the hour" - Matthew 24:36) he will return. Now, admittedly, if we are following his example, we would be ready for that return, but that isn't usually the focus.
This week's reading from Luke, is a perfect example of what I find problematic - a focus on the signs. And I particularly dislike the people who think they can control the Second Coming by making the things mentioned as signs happen - that way leads to nothing but behavior Jesus would disapprove of - war, killing, etc.
Photo Credit: Piper, John, 1903-1992; Reyntiens, Patrick. Tree of Life, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. [retrieved December 9, 2012].

21st Sunday After Penticost - Year B

This week's Lectionary readings are:

• Job 38:1-7, (34-41) and Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c  • 
• Isaiah 53:4-12 and Psalm 91:9-16  • 
• Hebrews 5:1-10  • 
• Mark 10:35-45

In the Job reading, I found it interesting that God brags about feeding the ravens, when today at least, we usually think of ravens as bad or signs of evil or death.

I was also struck by Hebrews 5:2 "[Every high priest] is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness;" and how that varies from so much of the religious based political commentary lately, which assumes that the speaker knows what is right and everyone else better follow them to get on the straight and narrow.


Photo Credit: Crow coming in for a landing (corvus brachyhynchos) by Tony Cyphert

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany - Year B

This week's Lectionary readings are:

• Isaiah 40:21-31  • 
• Psalm 147:1-11, 20c  • 
• 1 Corinthians 9:16-23  • 
• Mark 1:29-39

Having skipped blogging last week because I had a migraine, it's very tempting to skip this week too for no reason at all. Funny how that happens. We skip one of our useful, good, regular practices for a good valid reason, then we use that as internal justification to drop that practice for little to no reason. If we only did at our best, the bare minimum that we can eek by with on our worst days, we clearly wouldn't be living up to anything close to our potential.

As for the lectionary, I know I tend to be too hard on Paul (particularly here, because you can't tell from this blog but I actually think he's written some beautiful stuff), but I really find his attitude in 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 to be extremely two-faced. It's one thing to play on your commonalities. I have friends who have no interest in or understanding of large portions of my life beyond the fact that it's something I enjoy, believe or participate in. (And vice versa.) I don't think it is necessary to point out every area where you may differ in belief or practice from someone. It isn't necessary, for instance, to point out that you are a meat-eater at a vegetarian dinner (although you will sometimes find it necessary to say you are vegetarian at a non-vegetarian dinner to keep to your diet and/or beliefs.) But it sounds to me that Paul is advocating out and out lying about who you are and what you believe in order to garner converts. And that's just wrong! Sure, you can argue that potential converts may not have the context to understand parts of your faith and need to be introduced to it gradually. I can buy that. Anything looks crazy if you take small parts out of context. Context building is fine, saying I need to explain this to you first is fine. But I truly believe that the most effective way to share your faith is to live it and you can not do that if you are lying about what you believe and living someone else's faith so that you can blend into their community to start converting them. Blending into their culture and community to the extent that it does not conflict with your faith, sure - that's a perfectly fine way to get to know a new group of people in a new community. Hiding your faith? That's a valid (and in my opinion honorable) survival stratigey. It is absolutely backwards, wrong and unethical as a conversion strategy.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Third Sunday After Epiphany - Year B

This week's Lectionary readings are:

• Jonah 3:1-5, 10


• Psalm 62:5-12


• 1 Corinthians 7:29-31


• Mark 1:14-20

I've always liked this story from Jonah. Jonah prophesies, the people listen and repent, and God listens and staves off the threatened destruction. Later, people complain about the prophecy (and prophet) being false. I don't have any great conclusions, just new thoughts every time I read it. Today, it reminds me of staying up all night to make sure that there were no problems with the Y2K switchover (and installing last minute patches.) Like so many companies, because we worked hard (and because the people in Australasia worked out the bugs) everything went well when the moment came.

Psalm 62:10b, if riches increase, do not set your heart on them, reminds me of something my father told me about investments during the recessions of the 70's and 80's - it's only paper money. His theory was that until you cashed out your investment to use it for something else, any profit or loss was only on paper. A good reminder for these times, or any others.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Second Sunday after Epiphany - Year B

This week's Lectionary readings are:

• I Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20)


• Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18


• I Corinthians 6:12-20


• John 1:43-51

Several things from this weeks readings stuck out at me.

One was I Samuel 3:1b The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. I think it's an interesting reminder that prophets and visionaries may not always be readily apparent, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist or that the Lord isn't speaking to us. And like Samuel, we may not be aware that that is what is happening.

Another interesting line is Psalm 139:6 Such knowledge [that God has] is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. This is a key concept in my faith. I believe that many holy things are way beyond my understanding and I can only understand them imperfectly. That means that I (and the community of believers) can believe things that are later shown to be false because it was the best our limited human understanding could do at the time.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Baptism of the Lord - Year B

The Lectionary reading for the Baptism of the Lord is:

• Genesis 1:1-5


• Psalm 29


• Acts 19:1-7


• Mark 1:4-11

Today's reading is the second lectionary reading of Epiphany, somewhat jarringly to me, it is the first this lectionary year which deals with Jesus as an adult. It's like, Boom! Tuesday he was this baby getting gifts from the 3 Kings, today he's a an adult getting baptised. Speaking of adults getting baptised. I think there is a lot to be said for waiting to be baptised until you are at least old enough to understand what's going on and remember it. Certainly this was the case with Jesus. His parents took him to the temple to be redeemed as a baby, but as we see in theMark reading, it wasn't until he was an adult that he decided he should be baptised.

I recently read an interesting comment on Genesis 1 in a book by Jim Seybert. He points out that God didn't start by thinking about something, planning something, or discussing something, he created something and sometimes that's just what we need to do - create something.

With all the recent readings from and this week about Paul, I'd like to point out an interesting blog post I found about Paul - Declaring War on Saint Paul. Interestingly, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago where I told him (in response to him telling me that he had major problems with Christianity because of Paul) that I thought that most of what Paul had to say needs to be filtered by the fact that he pretty obvously had some serious zeal of the convert stuff going on (particularly with regard to perfectionism) that had he lived longer he probably would have moderated. Then this weekend I've seen several references similar to what I told my friend. It's funny what you find when you start looking for it.

Blogged with the Flock Browser