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Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23)
Proper 6A
Our passage this week begins with Jesus feeling significant compassion for the crowds surrounding him. He was meeting a lot of them, going with his disciples from city to village and at every turn he encounters need after need. Matthew describes him as continuously proclaiming the good news and curing every disease and every sickness:…
Psalm 50:7-15
Proper 5A
The Lectionary has carved out the exact middle section of Psalm 50 for this Ordinary Time Sunday in Year A. It would have us skip the first half-dozen verses that summon Israel to gather before God and then the final verses that are all about a scolding of the wicked. Instead we focus on God’s…
Genesis 12:1-9
Proper 5A
Sacrifice We ordinarily approach this text as a promise, the start of God’s covenant with Israel. It is not a promise without sharp edges and a demand for sacrifice, even. Jewish scholar, Rashi, notes this with careful comparison between this text (Genesis 12) and a later, obviously sacrificial text (Genesis 22). In Genesis 22, it…
Psalm 8
Trinity Sunday A
Probably we don’t know enough about angels to know exactly what it means for the psalmist to suggest that we human being have been made “a little lower” than the angels. We have the sense in Scripture that angels are powerful in their own way. They do the will of God. They are messengers for…
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Trinity Sunday A
Pastoral Need In Sunday school, you’d be invited to make a little booklet with one page for each day, a drawing of dark and light, earth and sky, dry land and seas, sun and moon, etc. And that’s how God made the whole thing — out of nothing — one day at a time. In…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Pentecost A
Would it ruin anyone’s Pentecost if the Revised Common Lectionary had allowed Psalm 104:35a to be a part of this lection rather than coyly skipping over its line about wishing that evil and wicked people would vanish from the earth? And by itself, is that desire so terrible? Maybe it’s a luxury for people in…
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