By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, reposted from Advent 3 2017
Just north of Magdala in Galilee stand the cave-pocked cliffs of Mt. Arbel. Twice in a hundred years, Roman soldiers shot fire into the caves to destroy Israelites who refused to give in to imperial rule. The first occasion was the imposition of Herod as king in 40 BCE, while the second was during the Roman-Jewish war of the mid-60s CE.
Easter 2(B)
John 20:19-31
By Laurel Dykstra
“Doubting Thomas” it’s the name we call someone who demands hard evidence, who won’t accept what we say or who doesn’t share our beliefs.
There are all kinds opportunities in the church use that name against someone. All sorts of differences in the beliefs of faithful Christians: angels, auras, miracles, marriage, dinosaurs, women disciples, Adam and Eve, Noah, what prayer is, what happens during a sacrament, what salvation means, what parts of the creeds we say with confidence and, perhaps most pertinent here, how we understand the resurrection. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Thomas, Bodies, Touch, and Violence”
Proper 27(32) B
25th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 26(31) B
24th Sunday after Pentecost
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them;
Psalm 146:5-6
By Juleta Severson-Baker
Psalm 146
Everyone who turns around to look for God is dancing
Every word spoken of God’s love is a poem
Every name pinned on the mystery of God is a metaphor
I will not put my trust in the parts of the whole
I will praise the whole Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Dry Seed and Soil”
Proper 25(30) B
23rd Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 10:46-52
By Rev. Miriam Spies
As a woman who lives with a disability (Cerebral Palsy), I have a complicated relationship with healing stories in our scriptures. I tend to read physical healing stories as restoring people into life in community, and restoring community to live as a whole. That being said, the story of Bartimaeus is a call story, as well as a healing story, demonstrating it requires truth-telling even and especially in our vulnerability to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Colleen Grant writes,
“There is also another type of healing story found in the Gospels, a type that shifts the focus from Jesus to the individual being healed. Its aim is to communicate something about the nature of discipleship and the necessity of having faith in Jesus. Thus, upon healing blind Bartimaeus, Jesus tells him, ‘Go, your faith has made you well’. At these words, Bartimaeus regains his sight and he assumes the quality of a disciple, that is, he follows Jesus on the way.” (74) Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Persistent Truth-Telling and Way-Making Disciples”
Proper 24 (29)B
22nd Sunday after Pentecost
Job 38:1-7, 34-41
By Wendy Janzen
The the first reading and Psalm for this Sunday are both creation texts – passages that describe God’s amazing work in creating the cosmos. The text from Jobs is part of the longest passage in the bible about more-than-human creation (Job 38-42). It is written in exquisitely beautiful poetry, and it is God’s rhetorical answer to Job’s probing questions about God’s justice – why bad things happen to good people. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Wild God, Wild Beauty”
Proper 23(28) B
21st Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 10:17-31
By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
This week’s Gospel from Mark is a familiar one, in which a rich man comes to Jesus seeking the path to inheriting “eternal life.” As Ched Myers noted three decades ago now (!), the key to the story is the “ringer” command Jesus adds to the familiar ones from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 6: “You shall not defraud [Gk, apostereō].” Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees!”
Proper 22(27) B
20th Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16
I find this weeks’ lectionary difficult to read because more than one of these passages have been used violently… or are used violently. Let’s be honest: These passages have been used to justify the oppression and rape of nature, to reinforce patriarchal dominance, to ostracize divorced persons, and to clobber queer people with hate, asserting they are not a part of God’s original design. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Three Stories”
Renewing Corporate Memory for our Ecological Dark Night
Proper 21(26) B
19th Sunday after Pentecost
By Jason Wood
Psalm 124
One of the things I’ve struggled the most with in singing contemporary worship songs is the almost exclusive focus on “me.” If you grew up like I did in a variety of evangelical churches, we tended to sing a lot of songs about how “I could sing of your love forever,” or how God “set me free,” or “here I am to worship.” And I really don’t mean to bash that, because there’s a lot that’s beautiful about reminding ourselves of the deeply personal and intimate love of God. The Christian faith proclaims: God does love me, and because of that I can live a transformed life. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Singing to Remain”
18th Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 20 (25)B
Proverbs 31:10-31
By Caitlin Reilley Beck
A capable wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.
Proverbs 31:10-11
This passage makes it clear who is writing Scripture and who isn’t. It reads like the vision board of the patriarchy, and capitalism for that matter, though it doesn’t originate in this economic system. According to this reading, the dream is to have a wife who will do a thousand different things – truly she is one who works to “have it all.” Except, surprise, surprise, she only gets “a share in the fruit of her hands” (31:31). If this is the Bible’s job posting for being a wife in a straight, monogamous marriage, it could use some workshopping because it is not very appealing. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: What is a good wife anyways?”
Radical Discipleship 