Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 What It’s About: This is a famous and very consequential scene from the time just after the exiles had returned from Babylon. It narrates a kind of second constitution of the law, in which the people (led by Ezra) turn back to the law of God through a dramatic reading of it aloud in their midst. The scene is (somewhat unrealistically, maybe) one of rapt silence, in which all the people dutifully and faithfully hear the... Read more

  Isaiah 62:1-5 What It’s About: The land is married–what a metaphor. This is a jubilant passage, exuberant about the changing fortunes of the people and the land they inhabit. This is the prophetic tradition at its most hopeful. What It’s Really About: The book of Isaiah, as we have it today, is a composite composition. It is usually divided up into three parts: first, second, and third Isaiah. This passage is third Isaiah, which was probably written after the edict of Cyrus... Read more

  Isaiah 43:1-7 What It’s About: This is a prophetic text, and prophetic texts often operate on a kind of cycle that describes the relationship between God and the people: estrangement, crisis, reconciliation, promise. This text from Isaiah lives in the promise part of that cycle; it comes after there has been damage to the relationship between God and the people, and after a crisis has intervened, and it comes at a time when God is reasserting God’s faithfulness to the... Read more

  Jeremiah 31:7-14 What It’s About: This is one of a series of jubilant oracles from this part of Jeremiah, that recount in various ways the saving power of God. This one adopts the language of God’s firstborn, playing up the metaphor of God as father. The firstborn of a father was, of course, a powerful position for people in a patriarchal society–although, as careful readers of the Hebrew Bible will know, firstborn sons often failed to receive their due in... Read more

  1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26 What It’s About: This is an episode from the life of Samuel, from the time when he was a boy, and his mother used to make him what appear to be liturgical garments. It’s a touching if odd story–the kind of detail that both inspires because of his mother’s care in making him a robe each year, and strange because that is the detail that got passed down for millennia. It’s a story of the sort... Read more

  Micah 5:2-5a What It’s About: This is a prophetic text, and in the tradition of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, this is a kind of geopolitical commentary. It is taking stock of things, surveying the nations and assessing the place of God’s people among them. This passage is usually dated to the exile, and so it may be that it comes from a time when Judah languished in defeat and estrangement. It’s not surprising, then, to see a hopefulness of a... Read more

  Zephaniah 3:14-20 What It’s About: Hey, it’s a Zephaniah sighting! I love these texts from books we don’t see too often in the lectionary. When I was a kid, the minister of my church preached a sermon from 2 Macadoos (or something like that), the conclusion of which was to point out that most of the people in the congregation probably hadn’t realized that 2 Macadoos was a made-up book. In other words, it was a sermon about biblical illiteracy,... Read more

    Baruch 5:1-9 and/or Malachi 3:1-4 What It’s About: The Baruch text is about restoration after destruction–in this case, after the destruction of Judah at the hands of Babylon. Baruch was, by tradition, the scribe of Jeremiah, and this book is attributed to him. It supposes to be a letter from Baruch to Jeremiah, although scholars have a lot of reasons to doubt this attribution. This passage, though, is about a kind of hopefulness seeping into the life of Jerusalem... Read more

  Jeremiah 33:14-16 What It’s About: It’s Advent! Advent is perhaps the most peculiar of the seasons of lectionary, in terms of the kinds of texts it brings forward. And this text from Jeremiah is really a prime example. Advent lectionary mines the Hebrew Bible for materials that might point to something like Jesus. Some of these texts were initially meant to describe a messiah (or something like a messiah), and others are taken out of context when they are made... Read more

  2 Samuel 23:1-7 and/or Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 What It’s About: These passages are both about triumph, rule, and power. The 2 Samuel passage records David’s last words, which are a kind of reflection on the power of the Israelite kingship and the power of the Israelite God. The Daniel passage is more apocalyptic, giving a glimpse of the future reign of God. Both envision a kind of Godly rule, on earth or in heaven or both, in a way that... Read more