Exodus 16:1-18            People complain, God provides manna.Manna requires faith in what God gives. This passage starts with words from us, from the people of God, in the middle of being delivered from slavery and death, in the wilderness, on their way to land of promise. Their words are not words of praise or worship or thanksgiving. They aren’t even words of…

Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; 4:10-17           God’s name is revealed: “I Am.” Moses is a reluctant messenger, but God uses him to deliver Israel. Moses, like Jacob, sees something that he doesn’t see all the time. Moses is awake, while Jacob is asleep, and so Moses walks over to the burning bush, and responds to the voice that speaks from the bush. God reveals…

Genesis 27:1-4, 15-23; 28:10-17   Jacob gets a blessing by trickery, flees,dreams of a ladder with angels ascending and descending. Receives God’s promise. It would be tough (impossible?) to tell then entire Jacob story in one Sunday, yet that’s almost what we’re going to do today. Hold on, here we go! The passages start with Isaac at the end of his life,…

Genesis 21:1-3; 22:1-14 God gives Abraham and Sarah a son in their old age. Abraham is told to sacrifice his son, but God provides the ram. I don’t think this is anyone’s favorite passage. It brings up far more questions than answers, and the ‘happy’ ending probably showed up on the 3500BC Jerry Springer show. Abraham and Sarah have received a blessing,…

Genesis 1:1—2:4a Creation by word; light, life; it was good. They say that the beginning is a very fine place to start, and that is where we find ourselves at the start of this narrative lectionary year. We probably know this passage. We may know that this passage and its content have been and are at the center of debates that have…

Hebrews 11:1-12:12, Often we use language without understanding where it comes from. Sometimes, we’ve lost the original meaning of the phrase. Catherine has heard about a great cloud of witnesses, and wanted to know where it came from. As she puts it, “the rest is context.”  So what is the context of the great cloud of witnesses? A first reading would indicate…

Luke 8:3, Luke 24:10 Joanna There are so many names mentioned in passing in Scripture. Part of our growing in faith is learning many of the names beyond the top line, and after learning the names, learning the stories behind the names.  Joanna is one of those. She’s healed by Jesus, she is married to power, and in passing it is mentioned…

Matthew 17:24-27 This passage is nestled in between the second prediction of Jesus’s death and resurrection and the passage where the disciples ask who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. As such, it probably isn’t a passage that we’re exceptionally familiar with, which is part of why Wils picked it. (The fishing may also play a role.) There is a…

Mark 11:12-14, 20-25 This passage occurs around in intertwined with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Palm Sunday passage, in Mark. Matthew also has a version of this story. Jesus enters, looks for figs out of season, doesn’t get any, curses the fig tree, goes in to the temple, chases out the money changes, and comes back the next day to a…