Reflections on the Common Lectionary.
Living the Word
Living the Word is a monthly reflection on the Sunday readings from the Revised Common Lectionary.
Enuma Okoro 8-01-2011
During Ordinary time, the season after Pentecost, it might appear that not much is going on, ecclesially speaking.
Walter Brueggemann 6-15-2011
These Easter readings line out the new life lived by the community of Jesus. They show, on the one hand, that Easter life is dangerous and demanding.
Enuma Okoro 6-03-2011
Jesus says, receive the Holy Spirit, whom you cannot control. Diversity is an essential attribute of a Spirit-filled church.
Walter Brueggemann 3-01-2011
Reflect;ion on the Revisd Common Lectionary, Cycle A: Transfiguration, False Desire to LIfe, Can We Start Again, and High-Water Mark.
Walter Brueggemann 2-01-2011
We enter into a season focused on Christ’s human possibility as a defiant alternative to the human self proposed by the dominant values of our culture.
Walter Brueggemann 1-01-2011
Epiphany is the exhibit of Jesus in the world. The early church was utterly enthralled by Jesus, but did not find it so easy to characterize him. The early followers found that, in his radicality, he outran all of their explanatory categories. But they had to bear witness to him.
For that reason the early church readily appealed to the promissory texts of the Old Testament and found that they anticipated his coming. In the prophetic promises of Isaiah and Jeremiah they found expectations of Jesus. The early church found guidance and comfort in the ancient psalms that celebrated God’s role in lyrical doxology, that acknowledged God as light, and that commanded a neighborly life in the world.
After prophetic promise and psalmic solace and guidance, the church issued its own evangelical conviction that Jesus is the beloved of God, the Word become flesh, the light of the world. They piled up images and phrases, because none was fully adequate to the wonder of his presence. And after all of that imaginative rhetoric, they concluded that it comes down to conduct that reflects his intent. After all of the talk about Jesus, there is the walk. The early church was summoned to a new righteousness, to bold decisions, to vulnerability in the world that attested the new governance of Jesus. Since then, the church has been coming to terms with the reality of Jesus, the one with whom God is well pleased.
Walter Brueggemann 11-01-2010
During November we reach the conclusion of the church year. We remember our dead and ponder the God of life. We begin Advent and the season of alert waiting for the newness that God will give.
Walter Brueggemann 9-01-2010
September 2010: 'Come, Rejoice With Me'; October 2010: The Nature of Faith
Walter Brueggemann 5-01-2010
These readings mark the transition in the church year from Easter to Pentecost, and culminate with Trinity Sunday. This transition lets us focus on both the particularity of the Risen Christ, who gives life in the church, and the continuing force of the spirit of Christ that is alive and at work in the world. The doctrine of the Trinity is the church’s somewhat enigmatic attempt to witness to the linkage between the risen historical person and the worldwide force of God’s presence known in him.
The good news is that God’s power for life is at work in the world. This news contradicts the common assumption that the world, in its deathliness, has refused and rejected that power for life—and that our proper stance in the world is therefore one of fear enacted as anxiety, greed, selfishness, and violence. The text tells otherwise! The text attests that the world continues to be the venue where the gift of life is given. The God given to us in this trustworthy text is one who makes no distinctions, who authorizes hospitality, who opens prisons, who breathes the world new, who assures good order in the world. In sum, the text defies the belittling of God’s world and invites us to live in the world boldly, freely, in peace, at home, practicing generative hospitality. We may be home-makers, following the God who makes a home among us.