Note: The Lectionaries contain readings for an Eighth Sunday of Epiphany to account for the peripatetic Feast of the Resurrection. This year (2022) Epiphany 8 does not occur. The scriptures of Israel are occupation literature. Most reading them in a North American context are not living under the same kind of duress. It may make...... Read More

The story of the widow of Zarephath is extraordinary. She receives a rare miracle when she and her son are on the verge of starving to death and the prophet Elijah makes a way out of no way. That should be enough. A happy ending. This week her story continues with the unexpected illness of...... Read More

Reading between the lines: God told Elijah she told a widow to provide for him. That conversation is missing. The widow seems surprised by his demand, not request. Why would she do such a thing? Feed a stranger before her child? How do we tell the story in a world where some shepherds fleece their...... Read More

The story of Jesus manifesting his divinity at the wedding in Cana is paired with nontraditional readings this week. They are a celebration of love and marriage and by inference, a celebration of human sexuality. These readings begin with the lusciousness of the Song of Songs. The psalm is a royal wedding psalm for a...... Read More

The Feast of the Presentation is a reminder of the Jewishness of Jesus and, the Jewishness of his mother Mary and her husband Joseph. It is important for Christians to take seriously that they are Jews raising their child as a Jew. This is especially important as the feast comes on the heels of Holocaust...... Read More

The proclamation that God is in the midst of Daughter Zion invites a double hearing: God is present with her people and for Christians reading with and through the New Testament, that one daughter of Zion could say that God was incarnate in her, in the midst of the flesh and blood of her body....... Read More

Update: This is the reflection for Epiphany 4 mistakenly published as Epiphany 3. In the first lesson God is made known through her fathomless love, the essence of who she is. Surprisingly for some hearers and readers, God insists that her love enfolds even ancient enemies. Further, God insists that she will not do the...... Read More

 Sermon begins about 26 minutes in. In the summer of 1968, scant months after the murder and martyrdom of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., these words from the King James translation of the Bible appeared on a tent in the Poor People’s Campaign’s Resurrection City, occupying the Mall in Washington DC: Behold, this...... Read More

Here are some texts (and a modified collect) likely to be included in future volumes of the Lectionary. Almighty God, by the hands of Miriam and Moses your servants you led your people out of slavery, and made them free at last: Grant that your church, following the example of your prophet the Rev. Dr....... Read More

Reading Jerusalem presented as God’s daughter and seeing and hearing the words, “your God is in your midst,” I can’t help but to read with early Christian writers and the continuing Church who read Mary’s pregnancy through Zephaniah’s prophecy. However, an Israelite or later Jewish reader or hearer would understand that the prophecy is about...... Read More