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Good Work

19 Sep 2018

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 31:10-31

The world has a helluva time imagining women as subjective beings apart from a relationship – or worse yet, their vaginas’ utility – to men. See: #metoo, rape culture, using women’s bodies/body parts to market all variety of products, marketing to women. Ironically, being in a relationship with a man while I was in college didn’t protect me from sexual assault by another man. And it’s a prejudice that I felt anew when I bought a house after I got divorced. READ MORE

[ Posted in Lectionary Reflections | Tags: Patriarchy, work ]

Setting Your Mind on Divine Things

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
Proverbs 1:20-33
Psalm 19
Mark 8:27-38

Wisdom is saying some weird things, and quite publicly too.

In my tradition, we follow the semi-continuous readings from the Old Testament as outlined in the Revised Common Lectionary for the Season After Pentecost. Unlike the lectionary readings during such seasons as Easter and Christmas, the first reading and psalm are not chosen to jive with the readings from the New Testament. But there is a certain convergence in these readings for this coming Sunday, which is perhaps not so surprising given that they are all biblical texts. READ MORE

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 35:4-7a
Psalm 146
James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17
Mark 7:24-37

In the first clause of the Apostles’ Creed, God is described as being “almighty.” This term has plenty of synonyms, but often our imaginations gravitate to the sense that God’s almightiness means that God is powerful, unable to be bested in a test of strength, or capable of doing anything. We might even repeat logical conundrums to illustrate this, such as “Can God create a rock too heavy for God to lift?” Likewise, when I ask my students to tell me what comes to their minds when they consider that God is almighty, they highlight God’s power to do whatever God wants to do. As they sometimes say, God’s will is bigger and stronger than any other will. I found myself returning to the Creed and these observations as I read the appointed texts for this Sunday, because while they do speak of God’s “almightiness,” they also challenge our prevailing understanding of this notion. READ MORE