Second Sunday in Lent (Year A, RCL)
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Sunday, March 20, 2011: Psalm 121; Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
Faith, birth, vocation: our readings offer us profound, intimidating terms for thinking about what it means to be in relationship with God.
by Samuel Wells
Clear texts and troubled times
I have finally gotten around to putting away the green garden hose I tripped over all fall. After some extended travel time, the sudden frigid weather caught me off guard. Trying to coil cold plastic hose in a chilly garage seems impossible. Getting the job done properly requires time and patience. I was determined to take hours if necessary and to do it with humor and the long view.
Illuminating the ordinary
Learning to see in new ways is one of the most difficult tasks of the transformed life. Old habits of selective vision, old choices about what to leave out and what to focus on tend to dominate us, even as we search for new ways of living that are in closer communion with the life of the Spirit. Transfiguration--that mysterious transformation of vision that is narrated in today's readings--is a radical, if brief, way of illumination.
By Amy Frykholm
Where our help comes from
During college, I taped a religious poster on my dorm room wall. Under a photo of a white country church against a green, timbered hill were the words, "I lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help."
I liked the Bible verse, the scene was pretty, and I enjoyed the peaceful reminder of rural home places. But a friend who was knowledgeable in scripture said the poster was theologically incorrect.
By Paul Stroble
The beginner's Gospel (John 3:14-21)
Look, people are sinking under the waters. Here in this wilderness, people are perishing.
Transformed
The Transfiguration provides a window through which the Christian narrative may be viewed.
by Ian Curran
Glimpses of glory: Matthew 17:1-9; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Exodus 24:12-18
I’m less inclined that some commentators are to condemn Peter.
Marias full of grace: Genesis 12:1-4a; Matthew 17:1-9
An economic migrant—a desert nomad—leads his family toward a land of promise, believing he is following the will of his Creator. And so begins the great trek for new life, survival, redemption. He will find danger, so much danger that he plans to pass his wife off as his sister. It is a trek repeated today in the heat of the Sonoran desert, in boats from Africa running ashore in southern Europe, in the hulls of boats from Fujian province to the shores of Long Island.
Heart of the matter: Exodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9
The vagaries of the calendar and the cycles of the moon bring in an early Lent and Easter this year, and so the transfiguration has come early too, cutting short the season of Sundays after Epiphany. Unexpectedly, we find ourselves back up on the mountain with Jesus. We were just there to hear him describing those who populate the kingdom of heaven. Now he returns, not with all the disciples this time, but only the insider troika of Peter, James and John.
Windblown: John 3:1-17; Romans 8:12-17
After an attempted coup in Indonesia in 1965, headlines reported that 500,000 people were killed. What did not make the headlines was the quiet revolution that began as the wind of the Spirit began to move into a collapsed intellectual and moral vacuum. There was no ballyhoo or promotion, but simply the response of untold numbers who found in the churches a haven.
Lenten roadmap: Romans 4:13-25
We are reading Romans 4 with the eyes of believers on a Lenten journey. There is a time for debate over law and gospel, works and grace—but not now.