Every week, we’ll provide a curated choice of weblog posts that talk to the upcoming lectionary texts to assist spark your creativeness and function a thought accomplice for you. We hope these musings meet you proper the place you might be with a contemporary, daring, and devoted witness.
August 31, 2025
Paired Psalm: Psalm 112
Walter Brueggemann, “Not Numbed Inside”
Compassion is a defining mark of God’s folks on the planet, a group totally dedicated to the follow of empathy, able to being “moved” in response to the ache and wish of the world. This folks isn’t not like this God!
Epistle: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Nadia Bolz-Weber, “The Sacred Act of Having No Thought What We Are Doing”
Possibly the entertaining of disguised angels is a non secular dialectic wherein we too do know once we are bringing another person’s angel. I feel we’re maybe at our most angelic, not once we are satisfied of our goodness, however once we are solely unaware of it.
Walter Brueggemann, “The Strangeness of the Stranger”
Most vital is the admonition of Hebrews 13: Let mutual love (philadelphia; “love of brother”) proceed. Don’t neglect to indicate hospitality to strangers (philoxenias), for by doing that some have entertained angels with out figuring out it (vv.1-2). Of most curiosity is the truth that “mutual love” (philadelphia) and “hospitality to strangers” (philoxenias) happen collectively, precisely an antithesis to xenophobia!
Narrative Lectionary: Revelation 21:1-6; 22:1-5
Walter Brueggemann, “On the Unrest In Our Cities”
The brand new metropolis that can displace the previous failed metropolis is a present from God. It is going to come “out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2). However the brand new metropolis isn’t solely a present. It’s also a process assigned by God. Now we have to do the work.
September 7, 2025
Semicontinuous: Jeremiah 18:1-11
Walter Brueggemann, “A Preacher’s Dilemma: Verse 12?”
However in fact, the onerous a part of all of that is the extent to which Christian preaching ought to sound “judgment” upon a society that’s willfully arraigned in opposition to God’s will for mercy, justice, and peace. Such declaration of divine judgment must be completed reluctantly and soberly, in order that it isn’t merely the anger of the preacher. However such truth-telling is crucial to our trustworthy rendering of our world earlier than God. With out such an utterance the church could change into “the happiest place on the town” that merely colludes within the denial that permeates society. Quickly or late the congregation should face the truth that our socio-political financial life is a contradiction of the needs of God.
Walter Brueggemann, “Unshakeable Methods?!?”
Our pastor, on that Sunday, let this tormented reasoning of Jeremiah make contact with the systemic racism in our society. One would possibly certainly decide that systemic racism is an “unshakeable system” amongst us that evokes divine judgment. However the prophet permits that such divine judgment won’t pertain if the group “turns” from its racism. Conversely, if God does good to a society, however it persists in racism, then that optimistic divine resolve can be altered into devastating judgment.
[Editor’s note: There were plenty of worries in congregational ministry keeping me up at night, but preaching in front of Walter Brueggemann, Sunday after Sunday, was thankfully never one of them!]
