The Lively Lectionary Old Testament is a blog that reflects on the Old Testament text from the Revised Common Lectionary each week.
Some biblical stories are very dark, and the one for today is one of them. After the relatively light-hearted story of the miraculous birth of the child of laughter, Isaac, we are confronted with a rivalry between sons that we did not anticipate.
Today’s text is a delightful one in several ways. It describes superb Middle Eastern hospitality, something one may still experience in the modern Middle East, at least in rural areas. But, of course, the chief delight is in the playful and delicious repartee that YHWH, Sarah, and Abraham engage in over the fantastic possibility that the prune-faced couple might be somehow able to have a child.
Gen.12:1-3 is the hinge of the book of Genesis, the literary place upon which the entire Genesis story hangs. And, I would add, because Genesis is in fact the origin story of the entire scripture, Gen.12 is also the hinge of the whole biblical tale.
Because this is Year A in the lectionary cycle, we are embarking on a three-month journey through the book of Genesis which will not end until August 20. We begin on Trinity Sunday, a day when the Christian community celebrates that mystical, and mystifying, theological doctrine of the Trinity, where God appears, it is said, in three indivisible guises: God, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I would imagine that most preachers will give primary attention on Pentecost, the so-called “birthday of the church,” to Acts 2, the tale on which the celebration is largely based. If we imagine that the Christian church was founded that day in Jerusalem, we should further hope that it was not founded on the slippery slope of being more against certain ideas than for the universal love and grace represented by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
The portrait of YHWH in Ps.68 is rooted in a time in Israel’s distant past when they struggled for survival in a hostile land, surrounded by people who were vastly superior to them in technologies and cultural stability.
I must say that Ps.66 is a relic from a theological time that I hope has passed away, but that I know sadly has not. God is larger, more mysterious, more inexplicable than we all can imagine, and because that is true, we are in no position to know precisely what God is about in our lives at every moment, in every occasion.
I know full well that the word “fierce” is often used in contexts of savagery and bestiality, a description of the behavior of wild animals, and thus perhaps not the first word that comes to mind when considering the saving and protective love of God. Yet, it seemed to me all the more important to get this wild element of God’s love into the English rendering.
Is it truly possible to say anything new about Ps.23? I have heard this poem so many times that I have stopped listening to its words. That indifference is a great mistake, I think, because this little poem is fairly riddled with powerful claims, hilarious assaults on human pride, and ambiguous meanings in any number of places.
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.
© SMU Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence
