Epiphany 4b - conclusion

We are grateful for rain in Texas, even if it comes five inches at a time. A lifelong friend, Kathryn Lucht, posted a “remember the 1967 Chicago snow” on Facebook this week and if Texas had been as cold as Chicago on Tuesday, 2012 would have been our 67. The “old timer’s memories of the 1967 Chicago snow were snow tunnels and igloos and cars buried on shut down expressways and a Lutheran grade school principal who never called a snow day in his life giving in and calling it a day – or two depending on how we “old timers” remember it.  Epiphany 4b is halfway between Christmas and Lent where memories of tinsel and tree are dim and Ash Wednesday is four weeks away. In Deuteronomy speaking a word about God remembers the past and anticipates the future.  In the psalm God remembers the covenant and asks us to do the same. The apostle Paul is willing to give up whatever is necessary to include those who would be excluded by their piety. And in the Gospel Jesus calls out an unclean spirit from a man in the synagogue but given what will happen to him he might have been better served by doing an exorcism on the scribes.