The Lively Lectionary Old Testament is a blog that reflects on the Old Testament text from the Revised Common Lectionary each week.
Ps.116 is a psalm that apparently enshrines the gratitude of a worshipper who has faced severe sickness, has cried out in anguish to God for help, has been answered by that God, and has offered multiple forms of thanksgiving for rescue. All who read this psalm can recount many occasions when the sufferer did not receive the reply urgently requested. God’s gifts are just that, gifts, not certain results of faithful actions.
Jeremiah offers to us one of Easter’s most profound calls - a promise of unity, when human divisions will end, when wars will cease, when partisanship and quarreling will stop, swallowed up in the blinding light of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
Nearly every church I know celebrates Palm Sunday, rather than Passion Sunday, but today I choose to focus on the text chosen for Passion Sunday, Isaiah’s third Song of the Servant of YHWH.
In response to the question of YHWH God, “Mortal, can these bones live,” the prophet first says, “YHWH God, you know,” which may be a way politely of saying, “Not likely!” But God has not yet given up on Israel, nor on us, because the prophet is asked to animate these bones with his prophecy, with his prophetic voice.
We preachers must be careful not to fall into the traps of simplism when we seek to elucidate these subtle and rich texts. After all, YHWH sees us as well, we claim, and evaluates our employment of the sacred texts, weighing our hearts as we ply our homiltical trade. Read more carefully, I regularly hear God say.
The Bible is a book filled with puzzles. To ask the question of the meaning of any text is to ask a very complicated question. Is the meaning what the author meant, what it may mean to this or that reader, or something else entirely different?
I propose something different today in my look at the familiar passage. I will newly translate the whole thing with an eye out for a few of the multiple nuances that might be captured in the actual words as I hear them. And along the way of my reading, I will emphasize those places where a preacher might reap a wonderful homiletical harvest.
At Ex.24, Moses, like Jesus later, calls selected followers to join him on a high mountain, this time the sacred hill of Sinai (or Horeb in another tradition). One can easily see the tokens in Exodus of the later Jesus story of transfiguration: clouds and fire and divine voice.
The book has been a very popular one both for Jews and Christians, leaving a profound impact on the proverbial literature of the West. It is filled with moral, cultic, and ethical maxims, folk proverbs, psalms of praise and lament, theological and philosophical reflections, homiletic exhortations, and rich comments about life and customs of the time.
It is from this marvelous and challenging passage from Isaiah that a significant religious and moral movement derives its name: “Repairers of the Breach” (Is.58:12).
What God appears to seek here is the concerted work toward justice, based on the certainty of God’s connection, pursued diligently and persistently.
The verse speaks of a time when the subjects of the text, namely Zebulun and Naphtali, were “in anguish” and were experiencing “gloom.” This period of Israelite history is known as the Syro-Ephraimitic War. Hence, gloom and contempt were the orders of the day. But now Isaiah promises light. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those living in the land of zalmaweth—light has shone on them” (Is.9:2).
© SMU Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence
