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.
Sunday, November 8, 2026 – Proper 27 (32)
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, may he rest in peace, gifted us with a post-election reflection in 2020 when the same texts were set for the day:
“Because I write this prior to the election, I do not know the outcome. No doubt some of us will be soaringly elated and some of us will be deeply chagrined. The pastoral task on this Sunday is to call the faithful away from either elation or chagrin back to the more elemental realities of our faith.”
Narrative Lectionary: 2 Kings 5:1-15a
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.
Sunday, November 15, 2026 – Proper 28 (33)
Old Testament (Paired): Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Living Outside the Lie”
“As social circumstances grew more ominous for Jerusalem in the Babylonian period (Zephaniah 1:10-11), the inhabitants of the city, so says the prophet, were complacent in their self-indulgence as they rested in their drink. They were in something of a stupor about their circumstance. They assumed that God would have no real say in their future. They imagined there was no jeopardy in which they lived. They were blind to every coming disaster.”
Psalm (Paired): Psalm 90:1-8, (9-11), 12
Rev. Dr Walter Brueggemann, “Borne Away”
In that long history of faith, the faithful have always found that there are special occasions amid the ever flowing stream of time that are freighted with both summons and opportunity. … Thus, even in the face of the ever-rolling stream that in the end leaves us all exposed, the faithful readily muster attentiveness and energy in order to engage in a performance of God’s intention for which the biblical word is “kingdom.”
Gospel: Matthew 25:14-30
Rev. Miguel Escobar, “The Parable Wall Street Loves”
“At the crassest level, the Parable of the Talents is read as a proof text for Jesus’ approval of prudent investment and wealth accumulation. At a more nuanced level, it affirms wealth accumulation so long as it is put to proper use, serving as a rationale for Christian philanthropy. Critically, both interpretations hinge on the notion that the “talents” of the parable are to be understood straightforwardly as money. But what if that assumption is mistaken? What if the great treasure we have been given does not refer to money at all?”
