Lectionary Blog

This is a violent passage. Is it suitable for Easter? Is it suitable for baptism? Traditionally Easter Eve is a time for baptism. We travel with Jesus through the waters of death to new life. We travel with the Israelites … Read more

Jeremiah tends to be a prophet of judgement and punishment; a prophet of lament. In this passage, while still in exile, we hear the voice of hope. Here is the Easter gospel as sung by Jeremiah hundreds of years before … Read more

This passage is very carefully selected, if you stray even one verse this way or that, even to 9b, you will find blistering judgement. Although we clearly associate this passage with Jesus’ passion (especially Matthew 26: 67) there is no … Read more

The lament of Israel in v.11 seems to offer the image of this amazing vision. “Our bones have dried up” they complain, “our hope is lost” and “we are cut off”. I appreciate the sense of being cut off as … Read more

Two mothers meet around an ark (tebah – this word is only used here and in the story of Noah in Genesis 6-8). The water that should have destroyed the baby has saved him. Two mothers who are both instrumental … Read more

I have always thought the Israelites in the desert to be a grumpy and grumbling lot – murmuring. Complaining about everything. Reading Exodus 17 today I wondered what it would be like to be with my husband and three children … Read more

The call of Abram in Genesis 12:1 is not really the beginning of the story. The story really starts with his father, Terah (Gen. 11: 27). Terah gets his children later in life: he is seventy unlike his father and … Read more

Read in combination with Matthew 4 and Romans 5 and a long Christian tradition it is rather easy to read Genesis 2 and 3 as a story of ‘sin’ and ‘punishment’; a story of ‘temptation’, ‘disobedience’ and ‘the fall’. But … Read more

Six days is a long time to wait. I wonder whether the six days in Matt. 17:1 are to remind us of the six days of nothingness that Moses had to wait through. The seventh day is the day that … Read more

This text is so rich it is hard to know whether to go for the ‘dark deep’ (v.2) the ‘dragons’ (v.21) or ‘dominion’ (v.28) or the ultimate relationship between all those. But I think that the real sting is in … Read more