Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: December 7 and 14, as Advent Dawns
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.
December 7, 2025- Second Sunday of Advent
Old Testament: Isaiah 11:1-10
Rev. Natalia Terfa, “Devotion for Sunday, December 20”
Things will get better. There will be peace and hope and love and light. It's coming. So no matter if you're in full Christmas cheer or feeling a bit more gloomy, there is hope. It's coming. Light in the darkness and joy where there was sorrow, life where there was death.
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “The ‘Ands’ of the Gospel”
The remarkable anticipatory oracle of Isaiah presents a series of “and” pairs: wolf and lamb, leopard and kid, calf and lion, cow and bear, lion and ox, nursing child and asp, weaned child and adder. In each pair, one member is an aggressive predator; the other in each case is a vulnerable subject as potential prey. The prophet, however, imagines a creation that is fully reconciled in which the strong and the weak, predator and prey, are fully at peace with each other. Without the “and,” we might imagine a world in which predators prevail and the more exposed subjects live in endless vulnerability until they are devoured or destroyed. That presumed world, in the horizon of the poet, however, has no future.
Psalm: Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “The Raw Power of Government”
It is as though the Psalm not only recognized the reality of an aggressive economic system, but also noticed that the king himself might be a party to that oppressive system. But no, not this king! This king belongs on the side of the poor and vulnerable.
Narrative Lectionary: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “The God of the Second Wind”
A second wind permits those denied breath to stand up again, that is, those in exile may receive homecoming. Now it is the work of the faithful to create policies and practices, institutions and a culture in which the deprived of breath can live and stand on their feet.
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December 14, 2025- Third Sunday of Advent
Psalm: Psalm 146
Rev. Dr. Brent Strawn, “‘Religion’ and ‘Politics’ in Psalm 146”
The psalmist says it is God who does these things and no other. Certainly not leaders. Don’t trust them. They execute justice for the oppressed, at best, only occasionally. Food for the hungry? Maybe. Pardon for prisoners? Well, usually only if it is politically expedient. Care for immigrants and the destitute? Here, as in all of the other categories, their track record is decidedly mixed. And that is true of both sides of the aisle and of all human leaders, elected or otherwise. It’s better not to trust in them. It’s better not to praise them. It’s better not to buy into their plans, which are as finite as they are, nor trust in their speeches, which are as fragile as their lungs. Both are just one heartbeat from ending. Forever.
Alternate Psalm: Luke 1:46b-55
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “It’s All Made Up”
Imagine Mary with her daring poem: He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52-53). We could ask her, “Is this a real poem, or did you just make it up?” Mother Mary would no doubt answer, “I made it up.”
Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11
Dr. Greg Carey, “Hope Not Optimism”
In this sense, hope is very much a strategy. John the Baptist held hope that God would redeem Israel from its bondage. Perhaps things weren’t looking good from prison, so John sent some of his own disciples to check in on Jesus. Jesus did exactly what we should do when we’re checking in on hope: he simply described his own activity.
Narrative Lectionary: Isaiah 55:1-13
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “From Chaos to Homecoming”
The poet executes a stunning rhetorical maneuver. On the one hand, the poet makes this sweeping cosmic claim for the decree as the sovereign rule of God. On the other hand, however, that word is given specific historical fleshly content. … For all the grand lyric of the poem, we should not miss the astonishing historical import of the poetry.
This poetic utterance is offered while the Babylonian empire is still the master of estrangement for these displaced Jews to whom the poetry is addressed. In prophetic imagination that refuses to give in to Babylon, the word of God outruns and contradicts the will of the Babylonian empire.
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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!”.
