Living the Lectionary

Psalm 96:1-13 Trees shout while the sea thunders and the fields rejoice and all creatures sing the refrain, “Great is the Lord and gre...

Isaiah 45:1-7 Cyrus the Great was good to all the gods who had been displaced by the Babylonians returning “the images of the gods… to t...

Matthew 28:1-14 The lesson of a parable is in the punch line and this one has the perfect set up. Just when we think the story is over - ...

Philippians 4:1-9 “Do not be anxious about anything” is a tall order in a world where anxiety producing events abound. From Ebola to the...

Psalm 23 Goodness and mercy following us all the days of our life is a good thing – a really good thing – but we have to slow down so th...

Isaiah 25:1-10 Isaiah imagines God will dine on death and swallow it up forever while the vast multitude of “all peoples” feasts on Chat...

Matthew 21:33-46 Since the text says Jesus is talking about “them” we can safely assume he is not talking about “us.” But then the livin...

Philippians 3:4-14 Like the apostle Paul I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh. Born to Lutheran educators, baptized in my f...

Psalm 80:7-15 The psalmist must not have read Isaiah who lays the blame for broken walls on the “pleasant planting” that produced sour g...

Isaiah 5:1-7 God’s lament sounds familiar because God’s sad song is so often ours as well. We invest time and energy and emotion into rel...

Matthew 21:23-32 During his last week in Jerusalem Jesus flips the tables of the temple money changers and turns the tables on the chief...

Philippians 2:1-13 The whole of the scriptures is expressed in Philippians 2:5-11 and if all we had was this ancient creedal hymn it wou...

Psalm 25:1-9 David trusts that the rebellious sins of his youth will not be remembered by the Lord and I have no doubt that the same app...

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32 So what gives? Didn’t God commission Moses to set in stone the small print following the second commandment? “I th...

Matthew 20:1-16 The kingdom of heaven is always a contradiction of common kingdoms that operate according to survival of the fittest whe...

Philippians 1:20-30 To live a life worthy of the Gospel is more about embracing grace than adherence to the law although there are always...

Psalm 145:1-8 “One generation commends your works to another” is the way the faith has been passed down through the ages so that the anc...

Jonah 3:10 - 4:11 Discussions of the Book of Jonah often focus on the detail of the “whale” and whether someone could be swallowed up an...

John 3:13-17 “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn it” but apparently the church didn’t get the memo. We've copyrigh...

Matthew 18:21-35 This is a troublesome text in that it appears that the “sin-ee” (aka the one sinned against) is at the mercy of the sin...