For Sunday, February 28, 2009

My apologies for the long delay since the last post. Between a short vacation and subsequent stomach and sinus problems I haven't had the time or the energy to keep this up. Hopefully that will improve now!

For the full NRSV text of the readings for this Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary click here

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
I have to admit there are times like this when I wonder what the good lectionary composers were thinking. I suppose someone somewhere has a need to know how to perform the proper animal sacrifices in order to "cut a covenant," but I have no idea where to find them. Even as a theophany it doesn't register on me. What is with the smoking, hovering, moving pot? Was God "incensed"? Was the flaming torch a harbinger of the Olympics? Strangely the covenant that is being made is cut off from the end of the reading.

I suppose the promise of descendants for Abraham is significant. If you look at the number of Jewish, Muslim and Christian people in the world today that promise seems to be fulfilled. Whether they are as many as the stars in the sky can be argued now that the Hubble telescope has revealed (to quote Carl Sagan) "billions and billions of galaxies" -- and each with countless numbers of stars.

Psalm 27
I do like this Psalm! Below I refer to Jesus' calm assertiveness in the face of the threat from Herod. I suspect he could have written this psalm if it had not written him. Why does my faith feel so cheesy when I read it?

Philippians 3:17-4:1
Want to know who the real enemies of Christ (or any major religion) are? Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.(Phil. 3:19) Hard to find it put any more succinctly, so why do we waste our time putting down other people of well placed faith just because we can attach a label to them and dismiss them accordingly?

Luke 13:31-35
I have a friend who fled Uganda immediately after his business partner's criticism of Idi Amin appeared in the local paper. His friend didn't make it. The moral of the story is that you don't mess with tinpot dictators like Amin or King Herod. They do have power over life and death. Ask John the Baptist. Most of us in North America have no idea what it is like to live with that kind of constant background or explicitly upfront threat to our lives. We are blessed.

When friendly Pharisees (yes there were some) warn Jesus of the threat to his life, I am amazed at his apparently calm, yet implicitly assertive and compassionate, response. Go tell him I am just doing God's work here (implication -- kill me and you kill God's work!)

Jesus' compassion for Jerusalem needs to be handled with care. This is not food for anti-Semites. Jerusalem is symbolic of political and religious power which tends to kill off any attempt at change -- from outright murder through to funding cuts and peroguing parliament. (You have to be Canadian to understand that last one.)