Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: October 12 and 19
Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.
October 12, 2025
Paired: 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Healing…without Money, without Price”
While both Gehazi, the servant boy, and Naaman, the Syrian general, assume health care is linked to money, Elisha insists otherwise. He is a champion of free health care! Now I am quick to recognize that it is a very long stretch from this ancient narrative of Elisha to our current health care crisis. The narrative nonetheless is enough to suggest that we can easily trace out two practices of health care, just as we have heretofore seen two practices of bread (food). We have previously seen that there is the “bread of heaven” freely given, bread for all of God’s creatures, and bread wrought through market forces. …We can readily see that there are two notions of health care delivery; one is the free offer of transformative care, the other is a calculating market-driven health care that is propelled by Homo oeconomicus and is designed for profit.
Narrative Lectionary: 1 Samuel 3:1-21
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “I Bet On You!”
Eli bet on Samuel. He did all the prep work with the boy in order that he could be responsive to his vocation. In the end, Eli does not flinch from the hard words given to Samuel concerning his house (3:18). Thus day by day in the sanctuary Eli had nurtured and guided Samuel to be ready for this moment that would ignite his life. It is impossible to imagine the boy coming to his vocation without the good, reliable bet of Eli.
October 19, 2025
Semi-continuous: Jeremiah 31:27-34
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Rescinding Absolutes”
While the phrase “new covenant” was readily appropriated by the early church, there is nothing “supersessionist” about “new covenant,” for the God of Moses is endlessly making new covenants.… Israel is endlessly summoned from its old absolutes to the newness God is doing among them. And of course the new regime that Jesus proclaimed as “the kingdom of God” is a summons to new discipleship and new obedience, a summons that mandates departure from old “absolutes.” Thus we may formulate a rule of prophetic thinking: Occasions of displacement and disorientation both require and permit the formulation and embrace of new promises and new responsibilities.
Semi-continuous: Psalm 119:97-104
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “The Empowering, Illuminating Word From Elsewhere”
Psalm 119, however, is exceptional. In all the other cases of acrostic each letter of the Hebrew alphabet occurs once in sequence. In Psalm 119, by contrast, each letter gets eight successive lines. Thus with twenty-two letters in the alphabet, and each letter reiterated eight times, we get a sum of 176 verses. It is for that reason that the Psalm is so long.…Unfortunately none of this is evident in English translation.
Paired: Psalm 121
Elizabeth Berget, “The Sacred Ordinary: Neither Slumber Nor Sleep”
I tried to picture the scene from God's perspective, and what I saw looked surprisingly like me — a mother, lying awake in the night, decidedly not sleeping, but instead listening for her children's cries, ready to tiptoe down the hall to their rooms the moment she hears them. He who keeps you will not slumber.
Narrative Lectionary: 1 Samuel 16:1-13
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Between and Beyond Certitudes”
The seven handsome, strong, impressive sons of Jesse pass one at a time before Samuel, but none of them qualifies. Finally after the seven sons, “the eighth son,” David, appears and is promptly selected and anointed by Samuel. The prophet had been instructed by the Lord: Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him… for they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart (I Samuel 16:7). The narrative has Samuel sketch out a new notion of humanity, and a new portrayal of manhood. This young, handsome king will act out his manhood in a different way!
