Lectionary Readings
(from the Revised Common Lectionary)
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This lectionary covers the next thirty days. For full lists, see the seasons and years below.
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Fifth Sunday in Lent—Lent, Year C
Summary
John's account of Mary anointing Jesus for burial contains several details that can help the congregation find their posture at the close of the Lenten season and anticipating the Lord's Passion and Resurrection.
Like his narration of Jesus' first week of ministry, John's Gospel sequences the final days of Jesus' last week, announcing each day's passing of this final week. Jesus announces the countdown at 12:23. His hour that he alludes to at his first miracle is now at hand. By the end of the week he will be glorified in his crucifixion. The eighth day, the first day of the new week, will begin the new creation heralded by his Resurrection.
Mary's anointing of Jesus anticipates the church's liturgy. She strikes a sacramental image, kneeling before the Lord as we do at the altar in Eucharist. The passage focuses on the sacrifice we may make of our own lives when we come to Jesus in faith to worship him. The word used for the ointment is pistikos ("pure") deriving from the same root as "faith" (pistis) indicating that her anointing is an act that derives from her great faith. Judas' legalistic (and also hypocritical, as John points out) criticism shows that the source of good works lie in the worship of Christ, and that extravagant worship in no way contradicts the command to give alms to the poor. Indeed, the work of worshipping God enables service to the poor. John also records the detail in Matthew and Mark about the smell filling the place, recalling the "pleasing aroma" of the sacrifices in Leviticus. Mary truly fulfills Psalm 51:17, that the sacrifices the Lord loves are "a broken spirit and a contrite heart."
So too as the congregation prepares for Easter, they may be reminded that the effort and treasure expended in worship of Jesus at Holy Week—made more burdensome by its observance in a world in which Holy Week is just another 9-5 work week—is indeed a pleasing sacrifice to God, even a participation in his suffering, even if in a small way.
Our present situation gives us more opportunity to worship like Mary, who alone among the disciples seemed to perceive that the glorification of Christ was on the cross, not in worldly success. Similarly, the world today overlooks Easter, taking no pause to "stay with me." The bemusement and offense taken at Mary is like what we may experience as we bow out of social gatherings, fast while others feast, or even take time away from work. This is the sacrifice God desires, even as the world may wonder why we aren't doing something useful with our time and money. The church alone knows that Jesus' glorification on the Cross is that great good thing from which all other goods come, for Christ alone gives life to the world.
Sunday, April 13, 2025
Liturgy of the Palms—Lent, Year C
Summary
The great contrast between joyful hosannas to the passion reading is a feature, not a bug, of the Palm Sunday liturgy. The preacher's unique job is to help the congregation enter into the mystery of Jesus' sacrifice, his crowning act of love for humanity.
Luke's passion narrative places special focus on Jesus' innocence. What may not be obvious to a modern audience is how Roman justice, though brutal, was generally well-regarded. To be crucified would not have made Jesus a pitiable sight but a contemptuous one. Jesus, next to the thieves, would have been thought to have deserved his fate. Luke's painstaking reconstruction of events, quotations, and testimonies of the players involved, like one of our modern documentaries aimed at overturning a guilty verdict, is meant to show that the fix was in from the start.
What is remarkable is Jesus' silence in verse nine. If anyone could take it upon himself to vindicate himself before men it would be the sinless Son of God. But the passage from Isaiah 50 discloses the heart of Jesus: a total reliance on the Father's purposes that needs no vindication in the eyes of men. It is enough for Jesus that the Father knows his innocence "therefore I am not disgraced, therefore I have set my face like flint. And I know that I will not be ashamed" (v. 7).
When we are unfairly treated by others, we also can choose the way of peace instead of rancor and so enter into Christ's humiliation, suffering with him on the way to glory.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday)—Holy Week, Year C
Summary
As on Palm Sunday, the preacher has choices on Maundy Thursday. There is the servant leadership on display in the foot washing, the mandate to love one another following Christ's example, and the all-important institution of the Lord's Supper. But the preacher will also find a helpful application in an oft-neglected tradition of expounding the Exodus reading on the Passover, (the pasch) and how Jesus fulfills it even now in his church.
Like the Israelites, the church has gathered together for Holy Week. Our lamb is Christ the Lamb of God, a male without blemish (as Jesus was sinless). In the Eucharist, his perfect once-for-all sacrifice is mysteriously made present, and his flesh and blood nourish those gathered in the sacramental bread and wine. In this way we come "under the doorpost" of the lamb's blood, and death passes us over. But we are also to eat this Eucharistic meal with our loins girded, our shoes on our feet, supplied for action, since we are not supposed to rest in this world but with the Lord at the end of all things.
The church is not a sedentary institution, but the embodiment of God's Spirit which is always on the move to convict the proud, to bless the needy, and to act as guides—with staffs in hand!—to show the way to salvation.
Friday, April 18, 2025
Good Friday—Holy Week, Year C
Summary
At the Cross, victory and agony are met, death is swallowed up in victory, and the way is opened to everlasting life. But yet sorrow is the theme of today.
Preaching on the passion and the crucifixion, the preacher is rarely without content—Christ's death for our sins is the foundation of our salvation. Rather, it is the tone of sorrowful victory that is difficult to strike, hence the Isaiah prophecy of the Suffering Servant may be used as a framing device for expounding the passion narrative, offering many themes for the preacher to anchor the homily—and all of them intersect at the cross.
The multilayered theme of the servant "lifted up" (on the cross, in the resurrection, and at the ascension) recurs at Good Friday; his marred appearance is also his exaltation and victory. The reference to "sprinkling" in verse 15 recalls both Israel's purification rituals and the priest sprinkling the blood of the atoning sacrifice at the altar. The double reference can be linked to the issue of water and blood from Jesus' side and the water of baptism with which he will purify the nations of their sin.
The preacher will have no trouble finding further correlations between Jesus in John's Passion and Isaiah's foretelling of the cross (silent, stricken, pierced for our sins, scourged for our healing, yet sinless and blameless). But the mysterious alignment of suffering and victory in Christ's "lifting up" at the cross is not to be missed, because it has the power to change the believer's orientation toward suffering in this life: not as meaningless pains to be anesthetized, but as an opportunity for imitation of and intimacy with our Suffering Lord.
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Resurrection of the Lord (Easter Day)—Easter, Year C
Summary
It is traditional to read John's account of the empty tomb every year (see Easter Day commentary on Year B), but the preacher does also have the option to substitute a Synoptic account.
Opting for the Luke account will give the preacher a view of Luke's special focus on the "last being first" as the women become the "apostles to the apostles." Two points are worth making: first this detail speaks to the veracity of the Resurrection, since an invented story would not include untrustworthy news bearers (as women were supposed to be at the time) as eyewitnesses. The second detail is to point out how the lowly are often the first to receive the gospel because of their propensity for faith. The women believe the good news immediately while the other apostles take some time. Peter rushing to the tomb is also an example of this, since he was the disciple who had denied the Lord.
Another springboard for the preacher is the image of the burial linens lying in the tomb. Not only is it another proof of the resurrection (graverobbers would not have stopped to undress the body) but it is a symbol of Jesus' final victory over death. The image is a callback to Lazarus emerging from the tomb in Luke 16 wrapped in linen cloths, symbolizing how even though he has risen from the dead, the ultimate power of death still lies on him, since he would die again. But Jesus' resurrection means that death, symbolized by the linens, has been put away forever. Therefore "Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him" (Rom. 6:9).
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Second Sunday of Easter—Easter, Year C
Summary
Many paths are open to the preacher in John 20 and it is futile to rank them in order of importance. Jesus' declaration of peace when he joins the disciples in the room is an opportunity to share that peace always accompanies the presence of Jesus. The church acts, but not randomly; speaks, but not frantically, prophesies, but not chaotically. All is guided by the spirit of peace.
Second, there is Jesus breathing on his church, granting them the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. His church now has his authority to forgive sins and from now on will act in his name. Theological emphases will vary across traditions, but the central fact in the scriptures is that the apostles are made co-laborers with Christ in sanctifying the world, a great responsibility and an exciting mission!
Thomas' doubts are a supporting story to the above, but have lately become a popular episode to focus the entire sermon on. In attending to Thomas, the preacher should avoid the recent trend of flattering the modern skeptic by lauding Thomas' high epistemic standard. The story is in John to highlight that the Holy Spirit must be received from Christ in faith. Thomas' skeptical disposition divides him from his brother apostles—they have put together all of the facts that he refuses to connect: Jesus's explicit foretelling of his resurrection, the fulfillment of the scriptures in their sight. All this he sets aside until he is given a personal sign, which the Lord graciously grants him. The proper disposition of the believer is to open the eyes of faith and waste no time falling at the feet of Jesus confessing "My Lord, and my God!"
