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Jeremiah 17:5-10
Epiphany 6C
It is hard to see why this text was chosen by the Lectionary for this Sixth Sunday of Epiphany, except that its “blessed/cursed” formulary sounds much like Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, which is the Gospel reading for today (Luke 6:17-26 and see the reading from Psalm 1). But there’s nothing here about the revelation…
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Epiphany 4C
As encouraging and upbeat as Nehemiah 8 was for preachers last week, Jeremiah 1 is more than a bit intimidating and negative. Nehemiah 8 depicted a preacher’s dream: a willing congregation that invited Ezra to open the Word of God, visibly demonstrated their ready hearts, listened intently to the Word and its interpretation, and responded…
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Advent 1C
Advent begins this year in burned out cities littered with dead bodies and in a devastated countryside where the deer and the antelope do not play (Jeremiah 33:4-5 and 10). After centuries of divine patience with Israel’s blatant covenant breaking, God has finally had it. This dark book of Jeremiah is God’s word of judgment…
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Lent 5B
When I was in Sunday School, we sang, “Into my heart,/ come into my heart, Lord Jesus./ Come in today,/ come in to stay,/ come into my heart, Lord Jesus.” As we sang, we imagined Jesus standing and knocking as long it takes for us to faithfully open the door to and invite him into…
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Proper 29C
Because Jeremiah 23 is about leadership, Americans may not have to squint very hard to see parallels between it and their current political situation. Having survived a bruising presidential campaign, they (as well as citizens of all nations) may even be ready to hear the gospel that God embeds in this text. Jeremiah 23 begins…
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Proper 24C
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider I am not sure why the Revised Common Lectionary’s series of passages from Jeremiah skips around the way it does (one week Jeremiah 32 but then next time around it’s back to chapter 29 and now we leap to chapter 31) but I think I can understand why the…
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Proper 23C
“You can’t go home again” is an old adage we sometimes address to people who aren’t where they long to be. Some of those “exiles” are homesick. Others have in some way grown too much to be fully comfortable where they grew up anymore. You might say, “You can’t go home again – yet!” is…
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Proper 21C
A real estate deal seldom had it so good. All through the Bible you can find a recurrent theme related to real estate, to land, to who owns what. It all began with a promise of land to Abram (who for some reason had to leave behind the land he already owned to set out…
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Proper 20C
Some Christians have traditionally thought of God as largely having virtually no emotion beyond anger at human sin. Yet such a notion is more Greek than biblical. The living God of the Bible is quite capable of feeling a wide variety of emotions, including great grief. There is great sadness in the Old Testament text…
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Proper 19C
I suspect that were Jeremiah 4 not on the Lectionary schedule, few preachers and teachers would be willing to tackle it. After all, among other reasons, relatively few of us like to talk about the kind of divine judgment it so graphically describes. What’s more, its grim apocalyptic imagery resists easy understanding and application. Of…
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