Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: March 1 and 8
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.
Second Sunday in Lent – March 1, 2026
Old Testament: Genesis 12:1-4a
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “The Hard Work of Exceptionalism”
Two matters stand out in this summons. First, the overriding matter is that Abram is to receive a land. This topic is further clarified in Genesis 15:18-21. Israel’s history and destiny are to be on the way to “the land of promise.” Second, land promise is in the context of other nations who are to be blessed by and in and through the people of Israel. This two-fold accent delicately balances the deep commitment of God to Israel, and the insistence that Israel as chosen does not and will not exist in an historical vacuum, but must deal constructively with other neighboring peoples.
Psalm: 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.
Gospel: John 3:1-17
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Wake/Woke”
Nicodemus has the grace to present himself to Jesus for instruction; he is nonetheless bamboozled and bewildered by the teaching of Jesus that invites him back to an elemental innocence. The status to which Jesus invites Nicodemus would require of him a readiness to forego the power and leverage of his great learning. But then, that is exactly how the gospel comes at us. We are required to give up the props we have acquired, to present ourselves in open-handed vulnerability for gifts that are essential to our lives that we cannot generate for ourselves.
To be “awakened” is to be able to recognize that our best certitudes are displaced and negated by the order of God’s love in and for the world. That force of love requires that we relinquish the management of our lives and yield ourselves to the practices of neighborliness that make newness among us possible. By contrast, the so-called “woke” do not expect or desire newness but only a continual extraction of privilege and advantage. Being “awakened,” in contrast, leads us to the neighbor.
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “In the Face of Nihilism”
In the end, the threats to our common life are human threats. And the counter to those threats is human engagement that lives and moves below our ideological passions and ideologies. Such an appeal to uncredentialed poets strikes me as a reiteration of the way in which King Zedekiah came to the prophet Jeremiah at night (Jeremiah 37:17-21, 38:14-16) or the way in which Nicodemus “came to Jesus by night” (John 3:2). Such desperate consultations only take place after it is recognized that conventional knowledge is not adequate to the crisis. So it surely is in our society. There are no technological solutions to the deep human problems that beset us.
Narrative Lectionary: John 13:1-17
Bishop Michael Curry, “Not Just Me, But We”
Jesus says, "I have given you an example.” Wash each other's feet, live in equality, mutuality, and the reciprocity of God's beloved community. And it's soon after that that Jesus says, "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you."
This is the way of love. You are to love and be loved, to give and to receive, to do justice and to be justly done unto. It's not just about me, it's about we. God made us to give and receive, to bless and be blessed, to love and to be loved, to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.
–
Third Sunday in Lent – March 8, 2026
Gospel: John 4:5-42
Rev. Natalia Terfa, “Pressing on the Bruise”
Because it is here that Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, stands with the outsider to end all outsiders, at high noon, all pretense stripped away, and offers her living water. Not forgiveness, since there’s nothing to forgive, but offers her life and life abundant. Life that cannot be taken away like a husband or a reputation.
Pastor Joel Milgate, “I Had the Samaritan Woman All Wrong”
In John 3 we meet Nicodemus: Male. Jewish. Named. Educated. A religious insider. Comes to Jesus at night.
In John 4 we meet the Samaritan woman: Female. Samaritan. Unnamed. No social power. A religious outsider. Meets Jesus in broad daylight.
And here’s the twist: Nicodemus doesn’t understand Jesus. But the Samaritan woman engages, asks questions, moves with the conversation, and becomes the first evangelist to her city.
So she’s not the “problem case” after all. She’s actually one of John’s model disciples.
