Living the Lectionary

  John 21:1-19 By the third appearance the disciples have gone back to what they know. “I’m going fishing,” is what you do when your world h...

Philippians 2:5-11 The operative word in having "the mind of Christ" is "let" as in allow or permit. Or maybe a better w...

  Isaiah 50:4-9 The word that sustains the weary is that the teacher himself was wearied by beatings, insult and spitting. Wakened by the wo...

John 12:1-11 What do you do when the man who raised your brother from the dead comes for a visit? If you are Martha you serve dinner. If you...

Philippians 3:4-14 Paul doesn't know how to do anything half way. He spent all his time and energy amassing an impressive Hebrew of the ...

Psalm 126 The memory of mouths filled with laughter sustains those whose eyes brim with tears. A sustaining memory is a good thing in and of...

  Isaiah 43:16-21 “Do not remember the former things…” is not so much forgetting the captivity of the past as it is putting the past in its ...

  Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 The proper sons (Pharisees and scribes) were grumbling because Jesus was eating and drinking with the prodigal sons (ta...

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 The apostle Paul makes it sound so simple. “If you are in Christ you are a new creation…” How is it then that so many ...

Psalm 32 The sad truth about ourselves is that we don’t get to “happy are those” until our bodies have done some wasting away. It comes from...

Joshua 5:9-12 Forty years of “what is it?” manna and now finally something new! Time and again in their wilderness wanderings the children o...

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Lent has always been my favorite season of the church year. I attribute it to being fed a steady diet of sad country wes...

Psalm 99 The Lord is enthroned above angelic beings, terrifying in their own right, and the mere thought of the Holy One causes people to tr...

Exodus 34:25-39 This is a strange story, but then the Bible is no stranger to strange stories. A burning bush, a plague or ten, fire and smo...

1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Paul’s defense of his ministry has always seemed a little defensive to me. He claims to be the least but believes hims...

Psalm 138 This is a psalm with high hopes. All the kings of the earth will sing of the ways of the Lord, despite the lyrics “he regards the ...

Isaiah 6:1-13 The lectionary gives the option of stopping after verse six and maybe Isaiah would have preferred to end with “Here am I; send...

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 It doesn't matter if your language is laced with love if your words fall on deaf ears. Forty years later St. Cleme...

Jeremiah in the Pit by Marc Chagall  Psalm 71 We will only recite the first six verses of Psalm 71 but I bet Jeremiah knew the whole psalm b...

                                                          Jeremiah by Marc Chagall -1956 Jeremiah 1:14-21 This is not the kind of call a pro...