Ordinary Time Week 15

Psalm: Psalm 81:1, 10-16
Old Testament: Jeremiah 2:4-13
  or Proverbs 25:6-7 or Sirach 10:12-18
Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-14
Epistle: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Welcome to another week of Ordinary Time. We will remain in Ordinary Time until Advent, and just a reminder, "ordinary" does not mean plain or worse secular, rather it comes from the Latin ordinal or counted. All time is God's time and it is important to remember that in the midst of this Ordinary Time.

Moving into our readings this week, In Luke we have another Sabbath story similar to last week. There are seven Sabbath stories in the Gospels and five of them are found in Luke. (2 unique ones not found in any other Gospel; John also has two unique to him.) Like last week, Jesus first healed an individual and then showed the pharisees how their hypocrisy blinded them from acts of mercy and love. Next however, he offers two short parables about dinner guests.

Ordinary Time Week 14

Psalm: Psalm 71:1-6 or Psalm 103:1-8

Old Testament: Jeremiah 1:4-10

 or Isaiah 58:9b-14

Gospel: Luke 13:10-17

Epistle: Hebrews 12:18-29

Today I am just going to say a few words concerning Jeremiah and Luke. First, in Jeremiah we have the calling of the prophet to his ministry by the Lord. Jeremiah is typical of the experience in the Old Testament: God calls, prophet protests their unworthiness, God reassures and sometimes equips or symbolically purifies the prophet (Isaiah and Jeremiah get touched on the lips, Ezekiel eats a scroll), finally there is the commissioning where the prophet is sent out with the summary of his message given (Ezekiel has a great example of this element in Ez. 3). Jeremiah's message, "To pluck up and to break down, To destroy and to overthrow, To build and to plant," (vs. 10) is repeated throughout his ministry and is a warning cry to God's people that justice and exile will come if the people don't change their behavior.

Ordinary Time Week 13

Psalm: Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19 or Psalm 82

Old Testament: Isaiah 5:1-7

 or Jeremiah 23:23-29

Gospel: Luke 12:49-56

Epistle: Hebrews 11:29-12:2

We have a couple of enigmatic passages this week, of which the exact meaning of the text is not clear. In Hebrews, we have the ending of the "Chapter Of Faith," of which we read some of last week. In general, we can understand the argument he is making: "faith" is not something new that the followers of Christ in the Church are now proclaiming. In fact, the idea is present in the Hebrew Scriptures right back to the founding of Israel, exemplified in Abraham's obedience and even back to Abel in the creation narrative. The verses this week are one long et cetera, basically saying the list is so long that the author just had to wrap it up by saying, "you get the idea." But at the very end the author had this strange statement,

And all these [men and women of faith], having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect. (11:39-40)

What does it mean that apart from us, (followers of Christ) the saints of the Old Testament are not complete? In others words, how are we now completing them long after they have died? I could understand it more if the text said Jesus completed them and through the cross perfected their relationship to the Father. But I just don't see what we have to do with it. So like I said, a little bit of a mysterious passage here. And sometimes we have to learn to live with mystery.

Ordinary Time Week 12

Psalm: Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23 or Psalm 33:12-22

Old Testament: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

 or Genesis 15:1-6

Gospel: Luke 12:32-40

Epistle: Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

I am still a few weeks behind, but I am still plugging away and posting when I can. This week I mostly want to focus on the reading from Isaiah. My NASB Bible heads this section as, "God has had enough." That alone should make us pause and wonder what was so bad that even God got tired of it. The answer unfortunately, was that God was tired of Israel's dry and performative sacrificial worship system. It had become entirely void of any meaning and God's Laws no longer had any say on how the people lived. I have a note in my Bible from a class in college under this section that says Israel had become "worship addicts." They were addicted to performing the ceremonies and the rituals but they no longer wanted to follow the heart and intentions of the Covenant God had set up.