Living the Lectionary

Mark 9:38-50 I’d rather not give up my hand, foot or eye   even if the consequence of keeping what causes me to sin is hellish. That’s th...

James 5:13-20 I am confident Elijah was a human being but I’m not so sure about “quite like us.” On the other hand he was fully dependen...

Psalm 19:7-14 We tend to think of the law as limiting, maybe for good reasons, but restrictive none-the-less. The psalmist sees the law as...

Numbers 11:4-29 The children of Israel, fairly well fed on manna and quail, weep in the wilderness because they long for the days when t...

Mark 9:30-37 On Christmas Eve 1988 I worshiped  at the Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool, England. I sat somewhere in the middle of ...

James 3:13-4:8 If it were as easy as James makes it sound “submit yourselves to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you” the devil...

Psalm 54   The lectionary often skips over verses that call for the destruction of enemies even if there is good reason for enemies to be...

Jeremiah 11:18-20   Jeremiah gives voice to the cry and complaint of the un-numbered and un-named throughout human history who led to the...

Mark 8:27-38   If Jesus thought of his generation as adulterous and sinful what would he say of ours? I know there are a number of well-m...

James 3:1-12 James does not mean to discourage “my brothers and sisters” to become teachers, nor does he expect them to be perfect, he jus...

Psalm 116:1-9 Do we love the Lord because we are heard or are we heard because we love the Lord? It sounds like the psalmist would opt for...

Isaiah 50:4-9 The word that sustains the weary is that the teacher knows a thing or two about suffering. He has endured far more than verb...

Mark 7:24-37 It is a difficult story to deal with if you wonder what Jesus was thinking when he called the desperate woman a dog. She didn...

James 2:1-17 What good is it my sisters and brothers if you supply the bodily needs of those who are hungry and do not wish them well by w...

Psalm 146 The Lord does not operate in a vacuum and the vision cast by the psalm cannot be realized without corrective lenses. In the...

Isaiah 35 Isaiah 35 begins with the parched land rejoicing and ends with the ransomed of the Lord returning to Zion with song as they are...

Mark 7:1-23 Thank God we’re back to the Gospel of Mark. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not into gluten free Gospels but five weeks of bread, ev...

Lisa and Josh and 100 bales of hay James 1:17-27 Martin Luther called James “an epistle of straw” for its less than solid declaration ...

Psalm 15 So I guess verse 5a (do not lend money at interest) means all the bankers are out of luck when it comes to real estate on the ho...

Deuteronomy 4:1-9 It sounds fairly straightforward. Obey and live or don’t and die. For a while it was as simple as that. But then the wis...