The Lively Lectionary Old Testament is a blog that reflects on the Old Testament text from the Revised Common Lectionary each week.
The story about the astonishing choice of David—8th son of 8 sons of the shepherd, Jesse—is rightly focused on here, since David will become Israel’s undisputed greatest king, despite his wanton and cruel behaviors later in his life.
Strangely, I am thinking of that classic “Seinfeld” episode about the “Soup Nazi,” who only sells soup to those who follow the strictest of protocols. Of course, Elaine does not do so, and he bellows at her, “No soup for you!” In a similar fashion, Samuel, the chief priest and prophet of Israel is confronted by a restive people who demand a king for them.
From June through August, the enterprising and imaginative pulpiteer has the chance to give to her congregation a careful look into a truly great writer’s insights into the dangers of power, the zeal and trouble of single-minded religion, and the dark and dismal actions of politics as they are played out against the backdrop of an emerging Israel, moving to a full nationhood out of a scattering of hill country tribes.
Because for Isaiah, contemplating and experiencing the awesome YHWH, as well as witnessing those terrifying seraphim flying about and screaming “holy,” the encounter with YHWH is no intellectual event, but an event that alters his understanding of his role as YHWH’s prophet, a role that appears to him to be one of enormous difficulty, not to mention one rife with scary implications.
John C. Holbert, Lois Craddock Perkins Professor of Homiletics Emeritus, Perkins School of Theology, earned his B.A. degree from Grinnell College, the M. Div. from Perkins and a Ph.D. in Old Testament Studies from SMU.
The issue of the day is the power of God’s spirit, and the marvelous Ezekiel text focuses directly on that very point.
I want to offer today something rather different: a 21st-century imaginative reading of Is.50 and Mark 14, surrounding the apostle Peter.
This short passage from Jeremiah has long played an outsized role in general discussions of the Bible. It did not take long for early New Testament commentators to see in these words a prediction of the appearance of the documents based on the life, death, and resurrection of the one they called Messiah, Jesus, that they thought would finally and definitively replace the Hebrew Bible as the crucial sacred text for them.
Allegorical interpretation, a method of reading long used in Bible interpretation from its earliest days, is rarely found persuasive in our time, the problem being that anyone can make the Bible say whatever they want, limited only by their wild imagination. So, what are we preachers to do with this tale of fiery serpents and sympathetic magic? It turns out that there is something unique about this story.
Today in Lent three, we are presented with the famous Ten. I choose the first of them for examination, because it continues this theme of the character and person of the God we worship uniquely in the Lenten season.
“When Abram was 99 years old,” is a most unpropitious way to begin a story of a promised baby! Nonetheless, that is exactly how the so-called Priestly author begins his tale of the coming birth of Isaac to the aged couple, Abram and Sarai. The older narrative, written by the J/E compiler, several centuries prior to P’s account, may be found in the chapters that follow. Such an absurd story is certainly worthy of more than one telling!
As we enter once again the season of Lent, we would do well to reflect on the relationship that God has to the world that God created. When we practice our prayer and meditation during this generally contemplative time in the church year, just what sort of God is it that we are contacting?
© SMU Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence
