Lectionary line (11.14)

Last updated on: November 13, 2015 at 7:18 pm by Fred Clark

Lectionary line (11.14) 2015-11-13T19:18:16-05:00 Fred Clark

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The Revised Common Lectionary provides extra options this week with an alternate first reading and Psalm. Here are my predictions for the sermons you’ll be hearing on Sunday, ranked from least- to most-likely.

Daniel 12:1-3. (The alternate first reading.) Some preachers like apocalyptic literature — the stranger the better. And if that’s what you’re looking for, this brief reading is quite a stew. It’s got the archangel Michael stepping up to battle and a brief sketch of the last judgment scene later expanded on (and amended) in John’s apocalypse. But, of course, most of the kinds of preachers who love End-Timesy passages like this have never heard of a lectionary and wouldn’t step foot into the sort of church that used one. And I doubt anyone else would relish having to preach on this. 40-1

Psalm 16. The Psalms are poetry, and the most rewarding thing to do with a poem, usually, is just to read it, preferably out loud. Some poems, and some Psalms, can withstand being dissected in a sermon, but I’m not sure this is one of them. Its assurances of trust in God may seem a bit too tied to material blessings to endure further exposition. And the bit about the faithful being spared from the grave seems, well, statistically inaccurate. (The Psalmist who wrote “You do not give me up to Sheol / Or let your faithful one see the pit” is, at this time, dead.) If your preacher is looking for a text to anchor a sermon on the hope of resurrection, this one is more manageable than the Daniel passage, but still. 20-1

Mark 13:1-8. In seminary, your pastor learned all about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD — a world-shattering, cataclysmic event for first-century Jews and early Christians, the far-reaching significance of which can’t be overstated. Your pastor read this passage in the lectionary this week and thought about how important that is, and how important it would be for the congregation to understand that event and what it means for our New Testament as a whole. Then your pastor thought about how much and how many different kinds of trouble they could get in for talking about it. 18-1

1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10. This is the lovely story of Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel. It’s a beautiful and beloved story — familiar, but not too familiar, and thus, at first glance, an ideal subject for a sermon. (I like that the lectionary uses Hannah’s song of praise as the day’s “Psalm.” It is a psalm, just not one from the book of Psalms. Much like Psalm 16 seems a bit like a collection of proverbs, just one stuck into the book of Psalms.)

But it’s also trickier than it might seem. Hannah is infertile and cries out to God, desperately praying for a child. God rewards her faith and her righteousness and answers her prayer. Yay for Hannah! But that doesn’t happen for everyone who prays this prayer. Your pastor knows this, and likely knows the names and the faces of members in your congregation who have been praying Hannah’s prayer for years without ever receiving Hannah’s happy answer. That could mean that this passage is less likely to be the subject of Sunday’s sermon. Or it could mean, if it’s to be included as the readings, that it has to be, even though that might be difficult. 5-1

Hebrews 10:11-25. These chapters in Hebrews are almost systematic theology, and the selections from Hebrews from the past few weeks have been a bit too abstractly intellectual to really preach. (Unless, of course, your pastor is the sort who likes to preach abstract, intellectual, systematic theology — in which case they’ve probably already covered all this in their 18-week Sunday evening series offering a line-by-line exegesis of Hebrews.)

But here all that theologizing culminates in something that sings. The last four verses here are theological and practical and applicable and all the other things lots of pastors look for in sermon material. Added bonus: “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds” is the sort of preaching that, if it takes, could make your pastor’s life much easier in dealing with the lot of you. Plus this passage ends with maybe the closest thing the Bible has to a statement telling us all to go to church — and what pastor wouldn’t want to include that? 3-1

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