Sunday's Coming

Often when the lectionary cuts out verses of a passage, it’s to avoid something uncomfortable. This week, it cuts out our discomfort with hearing lay liturgists try to pronounce 26 beauties of old Hebrew names, though I confess there is a small part of me that thinks it would be amusing to schedule someone to be liturgist and hand them the list: “Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah…” I mean, I’d never do it, of course, but a little daydreaming never hurt anybody.

Once you read around all those names, you find actually a touching story of a community hearing the word of the Lord, read and proclaimed, and finding all the mixture of emotion and knowledge that comes with a real encounter with the living word.

Perhaps you’ll be contemplating how the creation proclaims the word–while many of us in the north are experiencing something like the dead of winter, and others farther south wondering if winter will ever appear (or dealing with record heat in southern hemisphere summer), it’s easy to forget that human language isn’t the only way to experience God’s goodness. The psalm reminds me of the Celtic understanding of the big and little book. The written scripture is of course crucial (as the psalmist says), but it’s the little book–we can also read of God’s grace in the big book of creation.

The two New Testament readings lend themselves, in my opinion, beautifully to annual meeting season. When we reflect on who God calls us to be as a community, and how we have lived that out in the past year and how we might do so in the coming year, what better place to begin than with Jesus’ mission statement? Or with Paul’s vision for the church? So often we are captivated by the mission and vision statements we write in committees, only to be forgotten until the next annual meeting. How do we live out this vision and mission passed down to us in scripture? Both would make stellar prayers of confession, I think–so often we pursue our own self-interest rather than that of the whole body, so often we sanitize the mission of Jesus into nice healing and teaching and bleeding and rising. What does it mean to be the body of a Christ who says he is here to be with the poor, captive, blind, oppressed?

What are you contemplating this week? Do you have any ideas for visually enhancing the worship space this week? For calling us to generosity in the offering? For assuring us of forgiveness in the midst of our brokenness? For calling us together to worship? Affirming our faith?

No matter how formed or unformed your idea, stop in to the comments for conversation and inspiration!

How did things go yesterday? Did you do a ritual of reaffirmation of baptism? If so, how wet did people get? Did you use a particularly excellent (or terrible) prayer? Did a hymn work spectacularly or fall flat?

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Now that we’ve let go a bit of last week, time to look toward this weekend. It’s a bit of an odd one, as it’s simultaneously the season of the Epiphany, MLK weekend (which means a long weekend for many families…and here that means they all run off to warmer climes for a few days respite), and the inauguration. We are also nearing Annual Meeting season for many congregations. I wonder if we could fit in anything else?

If you’re following the RCL, this week has a couple of beauties and a couple of texts that you wonder why they’re put together.

There is of course the Wedding at Cana, often included in the season of epiphany, because it’s one of the times (in John, the first time) we see that Jesus is rather extraordinary. Also extraordinary are the other characters in the story–we see Mary as the pushy Jewish mother, insisting on directing the life of her grown son. We see the people who, for some reason, fill up 150 gallons of water without batting an eyelash or making any snide remarks. We see a steward and bridegroom who appear to believe that no, really, there WAS more wine in the cellar…and through it all, no one appears to need to actually take a ritual bath. Good thing! Though you have to wonder…is there wine in there? Or is there wine only when someone who needs it turns the tap? Is the miracle in the obedience? The moment of need? Or somewhere in between?

There’s also the spiritual gifts of 1 Corinthians 12 to work with this week–a perfect set up if you’re leaning into annual meeting season (especially since the following week, when many many meetings will be taking place to meet those bylaws that it has to be “no later than the first sunday in february” and to avoid a conflict with Super Bowl parties, the text is the second half of the chapter on the Body of Christ). It is one of my favorite things to point out to people that faith is a gift given to whom the Spirit chooses. How do you see the gifts of the Spirit at work in your community? How do people with varying gifts work together for the common good? How might this be a text we can apply to our nation in the midst of the inaugural festivities? This text is just BEGGING to be turned into liturgy–someone write a confession or an affirmation faith, stat!

Isaiah again gives us soaring rhetoric–language more exalted than anything we’ll hear elsewhere. There’s something a little edgy in the subtext of this classic comfort text, though. I can’t quite put my finger on it. There is something here that could be used if you’re celebrating MLK weekend, if you can put your finger on just what that subtext might be. And for those congregations grieving or feeling as if they’re wandering in the wilderness, this is good news indeed. Anyone out there serving a church as a long-term interim? There is good news for impatient wondering people in here.

And the psalm…I must admit that my Presbyterian heart is tempted to simply read the psalm responsively as a confession and assurance of grace all in one fell swoop this week. It’s incredible how easily the psalmist seems to flow from repentance to hope to praise and petition. There is always a part of me that wants to stick with just one for a bit before getting on with it…perhaps there’s something for us all to learn in how they interweave in this psalm.

Are you off lectionary for a series or holiday? Are you following the narrative lectionary? Stop by in the comments and share your idea-seeds–you never know when a little comment-conversation might spark growth of creativity for all of us!