The Word of the Lord
On any given Sunday in a church that follows a "lectionary" (a cycle of prescribed readings, in this case, "The Revised Common Lectionary"), there are two readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, one of which is a selection from the Psalms and two readings from the Christian Scriptures, one of which is from a Gospel.
At Trinity Episcopal Church in Wauwatosa, we usually hear all four lessons assigned for the day. The task for the preacher is to decide which of the readings will serve as the focus of the sermon (in my own case, I've decided to concentrate on the lessons from Romans for the summer).
Last Sunday, the first reading in the liturgy was Genesis 22:1-14 -- "The Binding of Isaac" -- the story of how God commanded Abraham to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice in a test of Abraham's faithfulness. If you are not familiar with the story, I invite you to find a Bible and read it.
What always intrigues me after hearing a story like that one is the "call and response" that takes place at the conclusion of the reading. After pausing for a few seconds, the reader says, "The Word of the Lord". And the congregation replies, "Thanks be to God."
Granted, the response is automatic, but I often wonder what we're giving thanks for in a text such as last Sunday's. I was also interested to note that the one person in worship last week who even voiced a question about the binding of Isaac was a soon-to-be 5th grader. I wonder if any adults had a question.
Maybe we've been conditioned to keep our questions to ourselves. Maybe we figure the clergy will answer our questions in the sermon. Maybe we "zoned out" and didn't even hear the text read. Whatever the reason...the binding of Isaac is a difficult text that will not be tamed.
A friend of mine took up the challenge and preached on this passage last week. The sermon can be found here:
http://www.allsaintsnavesink.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=31
Perhaps reading over the shoulder of a preacher who continues to wrestle with a text like Genesis 22 will remind us to listen carefully to the lessons, to ask questions of them, to argue with them -- maybe even reread them. Perhaps we can learn to think about the impact for the Church of naming such troubling passages as "The Word of the Lord" before offering a reflexive and unreflective "Thanks be to God".
On any given Sunday in a church that follows a "lectionary" (a cycle of prescribed readings, in this case, "The Revised Common Lectionary"), there are two readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, one of which is a selection from the Psalms and two readings from the Christian Scriptures, one of which is from a Gospel.
At Trinity Episcopal Church in Wauwatosa, we usually hear all four lessons assigned for the day. The task for the preacher is to decide which of the readings will serve as the focus of the sermon (in my own case, I've decided to concentrate on the lessons from Romans for the summer).
Last Sunday, the first reading in the liturgy was Genesis 22:1-14 -- "The Binding of Isaac" -- the story of how God commanded Abraham to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice in a test of Abraham's faithfulness. If you are not familiar with the story, I invite you to find a Bible and read it.
What always intrigues me after hearing a story like that one is the "call and response" that takes place at the conclusion of the reading. After pausing for a few seconds, the reader says, "The Word of the Lord". And the congregation replies, "Thanks be to God."
Granted, the response is automatic, but I often wonder what we're giving thanks for in a text such as last Sunday's. I was also interested to note that the one person in worship last week who even voiced a question about the binding of Isaac was a soon-to-be 5th grader. I wonder if any adults had a question.
Maybe we've been conditioned to keep our questions to ourselves. Maybe we figure the clergy will answer our questions in the sermon. Maybe we "zoned out" and didn't even hear the text read. Whatever the reason...the binding of Isaac is a difficult text that will not be tamed.
A friend of mine took up the challenge and preached on this passage last week. The sermon can be found here:
http://www.allsaintsnavesink.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=31
Perhaps reading over the shoulder of a preacher who continues to wrestle with a text like Genesis 22 will remind us to listen carefully to the lessons, to ask questions of them, to argue with them -- maybe even reread them. Perhaps we can learn to think about the impact for the Church of naming such troubling passages as "The Word of the Lord" before offering a reflexive and unreflective "Thanks be to God".
posted by FrGaryB | 6:06 PM
2 Comments:
I find that a difficult text forces me to be more intentional in that little liturgical interchange - to realize that I can't pick, cafeteria-style, the "nice" bits and leave the "hard" bits alone. To take a couple of tomorrow's readings as examples, it's easy to privilege "Come unto me, all you that are weary...and I will give you rest." far over "Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (That's not the greatest comparison as Jesus is speaking in the first and St. Paul in the second, I know.) But both are proclaimed and both require our response and acknowledgement, even if all we can do in acknowledging it is to say, with St. Paul, "thanks be to God through Jesus Christ."
This reminds me of the end of one of Craddock's sermons. In his case, the Prodigal Son. He said, "If you have a problem with this text, there's something wrong with you. If you don't have a problem with this text, there's something wrong with you."
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