Worship for Sunday, December 1, 2024: First Sunday of Advent
Advent is about the “coming days.” God’s people have always lived in great expectation, but that expectation finds specific, repeated enumeration in the texts appointed for these four weeks. The ancients anticipated a “righteous Branch to spring up for David.” Jesus’ contemporaries hoped for the time “to stand before the Son of Man.” With them we eagerly await the coming days: another Christmas celebration, a second coming, and the advent of Christ in word and supper.
Worship for Sunday, November 24, 2024: Christ the King
Even after Israel had experienced the vagaries of kings, the people longed for a true king to set things right. He would have the king’s title of Anointed One (Messiah); he would be the “one like a human being” (Son of Man) given dominion in Daniel’s vision. Jesus is given these titles, even though he is nothing like an earthly king. His authority comes from the truth to which he bears witness, and those who recognize the truth voluntarily listen to him. We look forward to the day he given dominion, knowing his victory will be the nonviolent victory of love.
Worship for Sunday, November 17, 2024: Time after Pentecost
November begins with All Saints Sunday and ends in or near Advent, when we anticipate Christ’s coming again. It is fitting, then, that the readings today tell of the final resurrection and the end time. In the turmoil of hope, fear, and disbelief that these predictions provoke in us, we hear a note of confident trust. Christ makes a way for us where there is no way, and we walk it confidently, our hearts and bodies washed in baptismal water, trusting the one who has promised forgiveness. The more we see the last day approaching, the more important it is to meet together to provoke one another to love.
Worship for Sunday, November 10, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Jesus denounces those scribes who pray impressive prayers but devour widows’ houses. He commends the poor widow who in his view gave far more than the major donors. Jesus doesn’t see her simply as an object of compassion or charity. She does something of great importance.
Worship for Sunday, November 3, 2024: All Saints Sunday
Of all three years of the lectionary cycle, this year’s All Saints readings have the most tears. Isaiah and Revelation look forward to the day when God will wipe away all tears; in John’s gospel, Jesus weeps along with Mary and all the gathered mourners before he demonstrates his power over death. On All Saints Day we celebrate the victory won for all the faithful dead, but we grieve for our beloved dead as well, knowing that God honors our tears. We bring our grief to the table and find there a foretaste of Isaiah’s feast to come.
Worship for Sunday, October 27, 2024: Reformation Sunday
Rooted in the past and growing into the future, the church must always be reformed in order to live out the love of Christ in an ever-changing world. We celebrate the good news of God’s grace, that Jesus Christ sets us free every day to do this life-transforming work. Trusting in the freedom given to us in baptism, we pray for the church, that Christians will unite more fully in worship and mission.
Worship for Sunday, October 20, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Today’s gospel starts with the disciples obsessing over who will be closest to Jesus, leading to Jesus teaching his followers about God’s take on importance and power. Here Jesus makes it explicit that the reversal of values in God’s community is a direct challenge to the values of the dominant culture, where wielding power over others is what makes you great. When we pray “your kingdom come” we are praying for an end to tyranny and oppression. We pray this gathered around the cross, a sign of great shame transformed to be the sign of great honor and service.
Worship for Sunday, October 13, 2024: Time after Pentecost
The rich man who comes to ask Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life is a good man, sincere in his asking. Mark’s gospel is alone in saying that Jesus looked on him and loved him. Out of love, not as judgment, Jesus offers him an open door to life: sell all you own and give it to the poor. Our culture bombards us with the message that we find life by consuming. Our assemblies counter this message with the invitation to find life by divesting for the sake of the other.
Worship for Sunday, October 6, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Today’s gospel combines a saying that makes many of us uncomfortable with a story we find comforting. Jesus’ saying on divorce is another of his rejections of human legislation in favor of the original intent of God’s law. Jesus’ rebuke of the disciples who are fending off the children should challenge us as well. What does it mean to receive the kingdom of God as a child does?
Worship for Sunday, September 29, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Someone who isn’t part of Jesus’ own circle is casting out demons in Jesus’ name, and the disciples want him stopped. They appeal to Jesus, but Jesus refuses to see this as a threat. Jesus welcomed good being done in his name, even when it is not under his control. The circle we form around Jesus’ word must be able to value good being done in ways we wouldn’t do it, by people we can’t keep tabs on.
Worship for Sunday, September 22, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Today we hear the disciples quarrel over which one of them is the greatest. Jesus tells them the way to be great is to serve. Then, to make it concrete, he puts in front of them a flesh-and-blood child. We are called to welcome the children God puts in front of us, to make room for them in daily interaction, and to give them a place of honor in the assembly.
Worship for Sunday, September 15, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Three weeks ago we heard Peter’s confession of faith as told in John’s gospel. This week we hear Mark’s version, when Peter says, “You are the Messiah.” In John the stumbling block is Jesus’ invitation to eat his flesh, given for the life of the world. In Mark too the scandal has to do with Jesus’ words about his coming death, and here Peter himself stumbles over Jesus’ words. But Jesus is anointed (the meaning of messiah) in Mark only on the way to the cross (14:3); so we are anointed in baptism with the sign of the cross.
Worship for Sunday, September 8, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Jesus seems to show partiality in his first response to the Syrophoenician woman in today’s gospel. Was he testing her faith in saying Gentiles don’t deserve the goods meant for God’s children? Or was he speaking out of his human worldview, but transcended those limits when she took him by surprise with her reply? Either way, the story tells us that God shows no partiality. Everyone who brings a need to Jesus is received with equal honor as a child and heir.
Worship for Sunday, September 1, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Jesus protests against human customs being given the weight of divine law while the essence of God’s law is ignored. True uncleanness comes not from external things but from the intentions of the human heart. Last week Jesus told us, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). We who were washed in the word when we were born in the font return to it every Sunday to ask God to create in us clean hearts.
Worship for Sunday, August 18, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Wisdom prepares a feast, sets her table, and invites all to come and eat her bread and drink her wine. The first chapter of John’s gospel owes much to the biblical tradition that imagined Wisdom as existing before anything was created and having a role in the work of creation. Christ, the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24), today invites us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. John’s gospel includes no account of the institution of the Lord’s supper, but here we can’t help hearing Jesus’ words as an invitation to the meal of bread and wine we share.
Worship for August 25, 2024: Time after Pentecost
In today’s gospel many people take offense at Jesus’ invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood; even many of Jesus’ disciples peel off. This is the backdrop in John’s gospel for Peter’s confession of faith. “To whom can we go?” asks Peter, in words we sometime sing just before the gospel is read. “You have the words of eternal life.”
Worship for Sunday, August 11, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Jesus says that the bread of life he gives for the life of the world is his flesh, and whoever eats this bread has eternal life now and will be raised on the last day. We live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. The whole purpose of life is giving yourself for the other.
Worship for Sunday, August 4, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Apparently not satisfied by Jesus’ feeding of thousands, some who were there press him for a sign of power; perhaps it is daily manna they want. As always in John’s gospel when people want a sign, Jesus offers himself. He is the bread come from heaven to give life to the world. He calls us to come to him and believe in him, and through that relationship to know the one who sent him.
Worship for July 21, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Mark’s gospel makes clear how great is the press of the crowd, with its countless needs to be met, on Jesus and his disciples. Yet in today’s gospel Jesus advises his disciples to get away and rest, to take care of themselves. Sometimes we think that when others are in great need we shouldn’t think of ourselves at all; but Jesus honors the caregivers’ need. We are sent from Christ’s table to care for others and for ourselves.
Worship for July 28, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Today is the first of five Sundays with gospel readings from John 6, the first four of which focus on Jesus as the bread of life. Today Jesus feeds thousands of people with five loaves and two fish. What we have, what we bring to Jesus’ table, seems like it will not be enough to meet all the needs we see around us. But it is not the adequacy of our supplies or our skills that finally makes the difference: it is the power of Jesus working in the littlest and least to transform this world into the world God desires, a world where all the hungry are satisfied.
Worship for Sunday, July 14, 2024: Time after Pentecost
John the Baptist speaks truth to power, and Herod had him killed. In Herod’s fear that Jesus is John returned from the dead, we may hear hope for the oppressed: all the prophets killed through the ages are alive in Jesus. We are called to witness to justice in company with them and to proclaim God’s saving love.
Worship for Sunday, July 7, 2024: Time after Pentecost
Jesus does great deeds of power and gives his disciples authority over demons. Yet none of this power is unilateral; it all must be received by faith. Jesus asks his disciples to go out without money or supplies so that they will be dependent on how others receive them. When we are sent from the assembly to witness and to heal, we are asked to be vulnerable, to be dependent on the reception of others. The Spirit always operates in the “between”: between Jesus and his Abba, between Jesus and us, between you and me, between us and those to whom we are sent.
Worship for Sunday, June 30, 2024: Time after Pentecost
A woman finds healing by touching Jesus’ cloak, and a girl is restored to life when he takes her by the hand. In both cases a boundary is crossed: in Jesus’ time the hemorrhaging woman was considered unclean, polluting others by her touch, and anyone who touched a corpse also became unclean. In Mark’s gospel Jesus breaks down barriers, from his first meal at a tax collector’s house to his last breath on the cross as the temple curtain is torn in two. We dare to touch Jesus in our “uncleanness” and to live as a community that defines no one as an outsider.
