28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A, RCL)
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December 13, Third Sunday of Advent: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18
The tension between the joy of the first three readings and the judgment of the Baptizer’s proclamation is theologically instructive. It presses us to hold the two together.
Fearing evil
It feels to me like evil is hovering over the prison in the form of a government ready to kill a woman who prayed with me when my father was dying of cancer. There isn't a thing I can do about it except pray this psalm and damn if we can't get it right.
A psalm for the living
In his years as a pastor my husband read the 23rd Psalm at the bedsides of quite a few people who were dying. It was the most frequently requested passage among those who were facing their own going and still able to choose. When I began to volunteer for hospice, I found, as he had, that even for people who had wandered far from church, even for the skeptical and the uncertain, even for those who were unused to prayer and didn't want to be prayed over, the 23rd Psalm provided a place of return that was beautiful, familiar, inviting, and reassuring.
April 26, Fourth Sunday of Easter: Psalm 23
When I pray the words of Psalm 23, the “you” I address them to is God. But I hope others will overhear.
Reading the Parable of the Great Banquet in prison
"Why you even invite us to any of this," asked Richard, "if you’re just gonna humiliate us and throw us out?"
by Chris Hoke
Reading ourselves reading the Bible
The hyperbole, violence, and abrupt scene changes in Matthew’s parable of the wedding feast have driven most interpreters to treat the story allegorically—thereby turning it from a dangerous puzzle to a reassuring message in code.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
The story of the golden calf is a parody of Israelite idolatry.
God goes on a tirade
Exodus 32 is too monumental not to mention. And while the lectionary assigns 32:7–14, it’s important to include verses 1–6 as well.
I suggest we stop calling this text the “golden calf” incident and begin calling it the “God changes God’s mind at the request of Moses” incident.
A shepherd who cares
This Sunday of words and songs about sheep and shepherds has always challenged me. For most of my preaching life I’ve been in or near a city. Now I live in New York City, where as far as I know even the Sheep Meadow in Central Park has no sheep.
Yet here is an enduring image from Jesus, an image captured perhaps millions of times in our art, our songs, our stories.
By Robert Rimbo
In life, in death, in life beyond death
It’s the second movement of Leonard Bernstein’s choral work, Chichester Psalms. A boy soprano (or a countertenor), in the “role” of the shepherd boy, David, sings in Hebrew the opening verses of Psalm 23. He is accompanied–sparingly, fittingly–by the harp. The first several measures are tender but not tentative; filled with sentiment, but without sentimentality (this per Bernstein’s instructions). When the women’s voices take over the text at גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת . . . (Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .) there’s an ethereal echo-canon effect. This part of the movement, when executed well, is something sublime.
Sunday, October 9, 2011: Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14
We might Bible-study our way through most of this difficult parable, but what do we do with the guest who is pulled in off the streets and then kicked out?