Second Sunday after Christmas (Year 4, NL)

Perhaps we should not be too hard on the people who ate their fill on the mountain and chased Jesus down on the other side.

I often feel that my whole time in ministry has been one when the word of the Lord is rare and visions not widespread.

I am among those called to lead people in confessing sin and announcing God's forgiveness in the Sunday liturgy, an essential action never altogether free from the threat of routinized going-through-the-motions. This action is anything but routine, however, when it occurs in the setting I described in my lectionary column for the Century on this week's Gospel lesson.

From where does Nathanael's confession, his insight, come?

Gothic cathedral. A gay couple approaches holding hands. “Step aside, please,” say the muscle-bound guards. They speak similar words to an African-American girl, a Hispanic man, a young man in a wheelchair. Then, just as we realize that the two large men are “church bouncers,” the scene fades to black and the tag line reads: “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.”

If you’re Eli, you’re not sleeping that well when the boy comes trotting in to disturb you with his nonsense.

Reading the call of Samuel, one wonders why the lectionary confronts us with such a dread epiphany.