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Psalm 86:11-17
Proper 11A
In one of her novels Anne Tyler shows a woman named Maggie attending a funeral. In the course of the service the pastor reads a psalm, and Maggie found it to be a lovely poem full of warmth and hope. This was a relief to her since ordinarily she thought of the psalms as often…
Psalm 65:(1-8), 9-13
Proper 10A
As I write this in July 2023, it feels at times like the world is on fire. Canada certainly has been on fire for a good bit in 2023. Canadian wildfires burning thousands of miles away have been blanketing with smoke cities as far away as Washington D.C. and also in the Midwest, giving us…
Genesis 25:19-34
Proper 10A
Since the fulfilling of God’s covenant with Abraham hinged hugely on Abraham’s having descendants, you would think that in the childbearing department things would have gone more easily. And yet in story after story we deal with some level of infertility that becomes a deep source of concern and that God eventually is said to…
Psalm 145:8-14
Proper 9A
The Lectionary carves out for us the middle third of this psalm and so although there are multiple (albeit overall related) themes in this poem, we will focus on verse 8 and how it sets the tone for the verses before us. “The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” …
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Proper 9A
Last week we looked at the exceedingly fraught and difficult story of the binding (and near sacrifice) of Isaac in Genesis 22. We noted how maddeningly spare that narrative is. The story cries out—nearly screams out—for more details. Instead we get a crisp, bare-bones narrative that dispatches with the whole terrible story in a short…
Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18
Proper 8A
Across its 52 verses, Psalm 89 covers a lot of ground. You would not sense that from the mere 8 verses the Lectionary has carved out for this lection but if you range beyond those verses, you will see a lot going on. There is praise and thanksgiving. There is a nod to the more…
Genesis 22:1-14
Proper 8A
A mere 21 chapters into the Bible, the Holy Spirit was brave when it inspired the authors and redactors of Genesis to include a scandalous story such as the one we get in Genesis 22. As some have noted across the ages, here is a narrative with so many fraught elements—not the least being things…
Genesis 21:8-21
Proper 7A
Whatever else a person may think about the Bible and about the Old Testament in particular, you have to say this: it’s honest. The text does not generally shy away from presenting less-than-savory facts about even some of the most important characters in the biblical story. It’s often the proverbial “warts and all” presentation. The…
Psalm 69:7-10, (11-15), 16-18
Proper 7A
The Revised Common Lectionary is usually a straightforward affair when it comes to selected texts. But with semi-regularity you get a text chopped up the way Psalm 69 is divided in this lection. First we jump onto the already moving train only at verse 7, then we grab 4 verses, put 5 more in parentheses…
Psalm 100
Proper 6A
It will never happen of course but sometimes one could wish that for certain absolutely key vocabulary words in Hebrew or Greek, all Bible translations in English (or in any language) could agree on one translation of that word that would get used consistently every time it occurs. That way readers of the translation would…
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