Every week, we’ll provide a curated number 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 recent, daring, and devoted witness.
October 12, 2025
Paired: 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Therapeutic…with out Cash, with out Value”
Whereas each Gehazi, the servant boy, and Naaman, the Syrian common, assume well being care is linked to cash, Elisha insists in any other case. He’s a champion of free well being care! Now I’m fast to acknowledge that it’s a very lengthy stretch from this historical narrative of Elisha to our present well being care disaster. The narrative nonetheless is sufficient to counsel that we are able to simply hint out two practices of well being care, simply as we’ve heretofore seen two practices of bread (meals). We have now beforehand seen that there’s the “bread of heaven” freely given, bread for all of God’s creatures, and bread wrought by market forces. …We are able to readily see that there are two notions of well being care supply; one is the free provide of transformative care, the opposite is a calculating market-driven well being care that’s propelled by Homo oeconomicus and is designed for revenue.
Narrative Lectionary: 1 Samuel 3:1-21
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “I Wager On You!”
Eli guess on Samuel. He did all of the prep work with the boy so that he may very well be conscious of his vocation. Ultimately, Eli doesn’t flinch from the arduous phrases given to Samuel regarding his home (3:18). Thus daily within the sanctuary Eli had nurtured and guided Samuel to be prepared for this second that will ignite his life. It’s unimaginable to think about the boy coming to his vocation with out the nice, dependable guess of Eli.
October 19, 2025
Semi-continuous: Jeremiah 31:27-34
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Rescinding Absolutes”
Whereas the phrase “new covenant” was readily appropriated by the early church, there’s nothing “supersessionist” about “new covenant,” for the God of Moses is endlessly making new covenants.… Israel is endlessly summoned from its outdated absolutes to the novelty God is doing amongst them. And naturally the brand new regime that Jesus proclaimed as “the dominion of God” is a summons to new discipleship and new obedience, a summons that mandates departure from outdated “absolutes.” Thus we could formulate a rule of prophetic considering: Events of displacement and disorientation each require and allow the formulation and embrace of recent guarantees and new duties.
Semi-continuous: Psalm 119:97-104
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “The Empowering, Illuminating Phrase From Elsewhere”
Psalm 119, nonetheless, is phenomenal. In all the opposite instances of acrostic every letter of the Hebrew alphabet happens as soon as in sequence. In Psalm 119, against this, every letter will get eight successive strains. Thus with twenty-two letters within the alphabet, and every letter reiterated eight instances, we get a sum of 176 verses. It’s for that motive that the Psalm is so lengthy.…Sadly none of that is evident in English translation.
