The lectionary for the season after Pentecost gives us 2 options for the first reading, the Old or First Testament lesson. One option is called semi-continuous and provides an overview of the stories and texts of the Old Testament, so that, if you came to church every Sunday every summer, over the three years you would get something of a sense of the entire testament. The other option hews more closely to the lectionary of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. In this option, texts from the Old Testament were selected for their relevance to the Gospel reading of the day. Continue reading
Tag Archives: faith
Heroes, Faith, and God’s Promises: A Sermon for Proper 14, Year C
After 45 years, I can still rattle off the starting line-up for the Detroit Tigers World Series championship team of 1968. I listened to every game on the radio, read about them in the paper the next day. They were my heroes. I’m not much of a baseball fan anymore except if the Tigers are winning (which they are right now). It’s just not the same now. It’s become big business, entertainment and it’s hard to look at any of the players, any professional athlete of any sport, with any sort of adulation. And now this week with Brewers star Ryan Braun suspended and the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez facing a ban through all of 2014, we know that every player’s stats are now tainted by the possibility that they have used performance enhancing drugs. But in other areas of life, it seems like people who we want to emulate, people who are held up as role models, inevitably have feet of clay. Continue reading