Additional content related to Sabbath
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Leaving Out the Hard Bits Reading through the Lectionary selection this week, I had the feeling I get when my pre-schooler, who is playing in the other room, suddenly goes quiet. Immediately suspicious, I want to know what he’s up to. So, similarly, it might be important to investigate the quiet bits, the parts the…
Luke 13:10-17 2025
To tell you the truth, this encounter is the Ordinary Time text that strikes the most fear into me as a church professional. The ease with which this synagogue leader takes out his frustration about the “wrong business” being done on the Sabbath, the way he automatically goes into the mode of stealing the woman’s…
Mark 2:23-3:6
Comments, Questions, and Observations These two Sabbath stories are far from unique in the gospels; time and time again, Jesus upends the rules established for right observance. Each time he does so, he is embodying what he said in Matthew 5.17-20: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;…
Exodus 16:2-15
The waters of the Red Sea have barely even crashed back together. The victory song has barely even faded off Miriam’s lips. The Israelites have barely even finished filling their canteens at an oasis with twelve springs and 70 palm branches. But out in that desert, the people of God melt into a collective toddler…
Luke 13:10-17
When the truth humiliates you, you are humiliated indeed. Worse, when a truth so obvious that it can be stated in a sentence or two humiliates you, then your shame is profound. It’s one thing if a philosopher builds an elaborate argument to disprove some point you had made but it’s another thing if a…
Psalm 36:5-10
Once again our friends who put together the Revised Common Lectionary are trying to give us a kinder, gentler version of Scripture. By carving out the middle half-dozen verses of this psalm and by leaving out verses 1-4 and 11-12, the Lectionary would have us only celebrate the goodness of God without having to be…
Luke 13:10-17
When the truth humiliates you, you are humiliated indeed. Worse, when a truth so obvious that it can be stated in a sentence or two humiliates you, then your shame is profound. It’s one thing if a philosopher builds an elaborate argument to disprove some point you had made but it’s another thing if a…
Leviticus 25
The second law of thermodynamics, in oversimplified layman’s terms, is that everything tends toward chaos. All things fall into disorder. It seems to be a spiritual and moral law as well. At least this is the case after sin infects God’s good creation. One of the most visible areas of this sin-generated chaos is our…
Mark 1:21-28
It was the Sabbath and so, naturally, the Jews of Capernaum went to the synagogue. Some of them went sleepily, others went with a great weariness following a busy week of work. Still others trekked over in a rather irritable mood for who knows why–maybe it had been no more than that they were out…
Preaching Connection: Sabbath