Category Archive

PROPER 17 Aug. 28 – Sept. 3   FIRST READING Jeremiah 2: 4 – 13 The Lord, reports the prophet, is angry with the people.  After all the good things he has done for them, they wander away from him.  Historians say that apostasy was the major sin of the Jewish tribes before the Exile to Babylon, but the prophets who come after seldom mention it.  The passage was written in verse and appears as verse in the New Revised Standard Version.  Some good poetry here.  Look at that final metaphor: God is spoken of as living water, suggesting a …

PROPER 16 Aug. 21 – 27   FIRST READING Jeremiah 1: 4 – 10 Today we hear about God’s commissioning of the boy Jeremiah, probably told by the prophet as a middle-aged man looking back.  The story has a charm because a wide-eyed boy, completely lacking in confidence, is told by his God that in serving him, he will be what he can hardly imagine: he will be great and powerful.  The passage is one of several in the Old Testament that justify what we say in our creed: “He has spoken through the prophets.”  We don’t say, “The prophets …

PROPER 15 Aug. 14 – 20   FIRST READING Isaiah 5: 1 – 7 “The Song of the Vineyard” by First Isaiah needs little comment.  It is an extended metaphor expressing the disappointments God feels at the behavior of his people and announces his intent to punish them. I have been asked why I have been dating the Sundays so oddly.  Let me explain, if I can.  The precise date of the Sunday is the Sunday that falls within this bracket of dates.  Why use such an awkward dating? The calendars we use daily are not the same as the …

PROPER 14 Aug. 7 – 13   FIRST READING Isaiah 1: 1, 10 – 20 First Isaiah, the author of the first 39 chapters of the Book of Isaiah, was a court prophet active from around 740 to 770 BCE.  He was adviser to several kings and a major player in the story of King Hezekiah (see II Kings 18 – 20).  Like Amos and Hosea, who were a generation older, he railed against the sinfulness of his people, but he was preaching to the people of Jerusalem and the southern kingdom, called Judah.  He addresses them metaphorically as the …

PROPER 13 July 31 – Aug. 6   FIRST READING Hosea 11: 1 – 11 Like the parent of a naughty child, the God whom Hosea visualizes is always of two minds.  He is angry with his children, in this case the people of the northern Jewish state, Israel (called “Ephraim” because mythically descendants of Ephraim, the son of Joseph).  At the moment god is punishing them by allowing the Assyrians to devastate them.  God reminisces about the obedient people he brought out of Egypt under Moses, how he was like a mother to them.  His anger abates, and he …

PROPER 12 July 24-30   FIRST READING Hosea 1: 2-10 Hosea was another prophet of doom in the footsteps of Amos, blasting the people of the northern Jewish kingdom (called Israel) for its wicked ways and for trafficking with the Assyrians, the enemy that in fact would soon fall upon them and obliterate them.  The prophecy opens with a strange story.  God tells Hosea to marry a whore.  Ok, he marries Gomer, a prostitute.  A baby arrives.  Between the lines one reads that they are a happy little family.  Name your son, says God, Jezreel, for the Valley of Jezreel …

PROPER 11 July 17 – 23   FIRST READING Amos 8: 1-12 Our reading follows immediately that of last week.  We have more of the doom that Amos prophecies if the people do not turn to moral behavior.  He aims specifically at merchants who can’t wait until the holy days to pass so that they can resume their cheating of the poor.  Amos’s prophecies of doom rise to a climax when he sees God cutting himself off from the wicked.  To be unable to find God is, in some minds, the very definition of Hell.   ALTERNATIVE FIRST READING Genesis …

PROPER 10 July 10-16   FIRST READING Amos 7: 7-17 Amos, a simple goat herder and pruner of sycamore trees, became the quintessential prophet of doom.  He wasn’t apolitical prophet, like Samuel.  He never names the Assyrians or Babylonians who would in fact devastate the two Jewish states as he prophesized.. He said simply, you are a corrupt, self-indulgent, irresponsible people; reform or God will punish you.  The image of the straight plumb line of God symbolizes the God-given knowledge of what is right or wrong hanging among a crooked people  Amos’s surviving work is small, but he is a …

PROPER 6 June 12 – 18 FIRST READING I Kings 21: 1 – 21a Our reading is an incident in the longer story of how young King Ahab was seduced into Baal worship and cruelties to his subjects by his wife, Jezebel, a Sidonian princes and Baal worshiper. The king desires the vineyard of Naboth, but Naboth will not sell his ancestral inheritance; in fact, he cannot sell it legally, for he is bound by ancient law to keep inherited lands in the family. So Jezebel has him murdered in the guise of justice.   ALTERNATIVE FIRST READING 2 Samuel …

TRINITY SUNDAY FIRST LESSON Proverbs 8: 1 – 4, 22-31 Proverbs is a collection of wisdom sayings and poems compiled after the return from the Babylonian exile. Many of the collected sayings were already ancient. Today we hear about God the Creator. In fact, most of our reading is a creation story. The creation stories of Genesis are not the only ones in the Bible. According to Proverbs, God’s first creature is, interestingly, an abstract entity, Wisdom, personifies as a woman. At God’s right hand during creation of the physical world, she is a sort of cheering section, rejoicing at …