Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: October 19 and 26
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 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!
October 26, 2025
Semi-continuous: Psalm 65
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Reflecting Awe: Intersecting Pietism, Faith, and Science”
Of course the reality of “awe” is not new in religious awareness, even if it strikes one as new in a “scientific” perspective. The rendering of awe in biblical poetry is through the singing of doxology in the recognition that the base, bottom, and ground of what we are is rooted in a reality other than us.
Reformation Sunday
Rev. Meta Herrick Carlson, “The Truth About Reformation”
When scripture gets in the hands of the people,
reformation rekindles and sparks
from embers of a faith that always finds
new words and ways and will for asking:
What does that mean?
Old Testament: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “To Hope Again”
Again, the restoration of civic community and its rituals of joy and wellbeing;
Again, the infrastructure of the community will function effectively.
Again, the long-standing habits of agriculture will resume.
God is not limited by or imprisoned in present circumstance. God acts in faithful freedom.
