Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: November 23 and 30, and Looking Toward Advent
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.
November 23, 2025- Christ the King / Reign of Christ
Rev. Jenny Sung, “Permission to Feel More Than Gratitude”
In Philippi we saw the first Christian Church built in 314 CE, and now it sits in ruins. We saw the ruins of wealthy cities and powerful empires. We saw the tombs of Emperors who were worshipped like Gods and to dust they have returned. No amount of money or power kept them from crumbling. After seeing site after site of ruins, you wonder what’s the point? What will survive? Even now many worry about the institution of the Church. Everything turns to dust, and yet … there we sat. A group of 26 humans on this pilgrimage compelled by the same story that drove Paul to these holy spaces. Despite the many ruins and fallen empires this story continues on. This story continues to draw us close. This story still keeps its promise.
Many of us just celebrated The Reign of Christ Sunday remembering God is God. Everything else we try to worship or lift up turns to dust.
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As Advent Dawns
Ryan Panzer, “Finding the Stillness of Advent in a Culture of Yuletide Intensity”
Today I would argue that our current cultural understanding of Christmas isn't as a time of excess but as a time of fervor. We don't view December as a season of consumption and spending, as some would suggest, but a period of vigor. We don't attend 9 Christmas dinners and wrap 35 presents or sit through 5 school concerts because of a desire to consume. We do it because we are caught up in the new-found intensity of the yuletide. This isn't a season of consumption. It's a season of hustle.
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “The Advent of Agency”
In the same way it is possible in the church, in the midst of lament over our loss of traditional church, traditional culture, and dominant nationalism, to give voice to assurances about God’s fidelity that persists in and through our deepest losses, and is not disrupted by those losses. Thus we have loss to lament; but then we come to affirmation. The church can celebrate that affirmation in the face of lament; but that affirmation leads to neither resignation nor complacency. Rather, it leads to agency, to the readiness and capacity to act in constructive, imaginative ways in defiance toward newness.
Editor’s Note: Have you had a look at our newest Advent To Go? If you’re a lectionary preacher unsure about a sermon series, you might be interested to know that our resources primarily use the assigned texts for the day. Of the lectionary readings for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, our only changes are on Advent 1 and 3. On the first Sunday of Advent, we make space for the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah (traditionally left out of the RCL!). On the third Sunday of Advent, we focus on the annunciation to Mary, expanding on the lectionary’s use of her Magnificat as the Psalm for the day. Give it a look - you might just find yourself saying “Yes!”.
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November 30, 2025- First Sunday of Advent
Old Testament: Isaiah 2:1-5 – Swords beaten into plowshares
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Seasons of Bells and Chains”
In our wondrous excess of music and celebration at Christmas, we in the church must take care that Christmas is not an escape from the real world. We of course are familiar with the prophetic trope lined out by Isaiah and Micah: They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3). To this poetic couplet we might add a third element: They shall hammer their chains into bells. That hammering of chains into bells could silence the clanging chains of exploitation. But that hammering is not accomplished in the wish-world of worship. It happens in and through the sustained hard work of advocacy, testimony, and dispute.
Epistle: Romans 13:11-14 – Put on the Lord Jesus Christ
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Lethal Discovery/Toxic Denial”
The “works of darkness” and the “desires of the flesh” include for us White supremacy, thus the call away from pretended innocence to be fully woke to reality. Apocalyptic rhetoric is a summons to “put up or shut up.” It is now time for the church to respond to that imperative and “put up.”
Gospel: Matthew 24:36-44 – Be ready, for the Son of Man is coming
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Wake/Woke”
Turning to the Bible, we find that the term “wake” is a persistent summons of gospel faith that voices the urgency of apocalyptic intrusion. It concerns vigilance for the abrupt arrival of God’s newness among us. … This is a life that is rendered back to God in glad, grateful obedience, a life quite in contrast to one of self-indulgence.
