25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B, RCL)

Sometimes preaching in a lectionary church is like being Philip in Acts 8—the Spirit plucks us up and drops us where ever she darn well pleases. It is necessarily this way, certainly.  Between the thematic requirements of the seasons of the church year and the sheer length of the four Gospels spread out over 156 Sundays, there is no way we can read all four in their entirety in three years. So, we skip stuff. Especially in Year B, as we try to mash the shortest Gospel, Mark, together with the other Gospel, John, together in some supposedly coherent way.

The other morning during my run I listened to Krista Tippett’s 2010 interview with Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.

Proverbs 31 used to be a standard at funerals. That was before we realized that womanly virtue meant more than giving a husband bragging rites in the city gates. I use to think it my pastoral duty to root out both masculine and feminine stereotypes in liturgy, hymnody and scripture. Now I’m not so sure.

Enough water has passed under the bridge to allow us to take a second look at the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31.

The crucified and resurrected Christ becomes the standard against which to measure all accounts of wisdom.

History is written by the winners, and Judas didn't win.

Jesus sees something the disciples do not even know they are missing.

The Roman custom of lifting a newborn infant probably underlies Jesus’s symbolic action in Mark 9.