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Isaiah 49:1-7
Epiphany 2A
“I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing” (Isaiah 49:3) might be a motto of more than a few of the pastors and teachers I know. Even on a Sunday so close to the start of a new year, some of us wrestle with the kind of…
Isaiah 42:1-9
Epiphany 1A
Christians are sometimes prone to hurdle the Old Testament’s original context in order to sprint to the finish line that is the Jesus to whom it points. We always want, after all, to preach and teach Christ and him crucified. So preachers and teachers sometimes treat texts like Isaiah 42 as little more than an…
Isaiah 52:7-10
Christmas Day A
I’ve seen the feet of a few preachers and teachers who proclaim the gospel’s “good news.” Some are big, others are fairly small. Some are quite flat. Preachers and teachers’ feet can even be pretty smelly. But I’m not sure even their closest family members and friends would call them “beautiful.” Yet no one who…
Isaiah 7:10-16
Advent 4A
Human life is full of signs. A number painted on metal rectangle indicates the legal speed limit on a road or highway. Twin golden arches are a sign of the culinary paradise that awaits you at the next exit. Yet once you leave a highway, you find even more signs: A figure with pants on…
Isaiah 35:1-10
Advent 3A
With the words, “This text shouldn’t be here,” my colleague Barbara Lundblad begins a thoughtful presentation on Isaiah 35. After all, as she points out, it’s not just that this text doesn’t address anyone by name. It’s also that it almost immediately follows a poem that’s full of images of creational disaster: “Edom’s streams will…
Isaiah 11:1-10
Advent 2A
Some people claim the theologian Karl Barth said that modern Christians should always have an open Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other. It’s advice that remains as good today as when Barth first offered it. So those who preach and teach this Sunday’s Old Testament text the Lectionary appoints might…
Isaiah 2:1-5
Advent 1A
How can we experience peace in a world that’s so desperately short on it? It’s a question both as ancient as our first parents’ fall into sin and as modern as ongoing war in places like parts of the Middle East. Some people assumed that we’d finally figure out how to have peace during the…
Isaiah 65:17-25
Proper 28C
The “heavens and … earth” that Isaiah 65 describes are clearly “new.” After all, they’re radically unlike the ones we know here and now. In fact, the prophet’s picture of them is so earthly and yet different from what we now experience that it almost makes us weep with longing for what Isaiah’s vision symbolizes….
Isaiah 5:1-7
Proper 15C
Isaiah 5 begins with what looks like a light-hearted romantic ballad. A kind of troubadour opens this chapter by saying, “Listen up! I’m going to sing you a ballad about my beloved one–a song about the vineyard of our love!” It reminds me of the Paul McCartney song that claims the world will never have…
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Proper 14C
As this is being written, grim news fills our media. Terrorist attacks. Police shootings. Ambushes of police officers. Civil wars and attempted coups. They remind us that while the text the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday may be nearly 3,000 years old, both its context and the sins it describes are nearly as contemporary as…
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