Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: May 24 and 31
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.
May 24, 2026 – Pentecost
Rev. Dr. Eric D. Barreto, “Difference is a Gift”
Some have forwarded that Pentecost reverses the punishment God meted out at Babel. Finally, we can understand one another because the Spirit enables all to understand one language.
But to me, this is a significant misreading of Babel. Is it really a punishment from God that we are all different, that we speak different languages and live in different cultures? That is, is difference a problem in need of a solution? I certainly don't think so, and the vibrancy of the world's cultures is evidence against the misreading of Babel.
Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Biodiversity Contra Babel”
…we may entertain the thought that it is exactly the work of the Spirit, the work of the creator God, to provide and insist upon biodiversity and the preservation and protection of species. Just as Babel sought to reduce language to a single one that exercised control, so the industrial food project—coupled with undisciplined consumer yearning—seeks to reduce species in the interest of speed, quantity, and profit. But the Spirit will have it otherwise, because the creator God is insistent upon the teeming myriad of species that refuses our mindless, undisciplined reductionism.
May 31, 2026 – Trinity Sunday
Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox, “Reflections on Holy Trinity”
Maybe,
just because it is God
that we are talking about,
it is good and right
for it to feel
a little beyond us,
not easily domesticated,
and still worth
our pondering
and wrestling
and wondering.
Old Testament Reading: Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, “Holy Blackness: The Matrix of Creation”
Some of our fear of the dark is ancient and instinctual from a time when we were not sure the sun would return from setting or storm or eclipse: Stay with us Lord of Light for the night is dark and full of terrors. … But some of our fear of the dark is carefully calculated and mercenary. Some lost sight of or chose not to see the beauty of the diversity of creation having lost the memory of their own ancestral African roots and, when encountering a suddenly much larger world saw that our black beauty was valuable, profitable, salable.
Narrative Lectionary: Ruth 1:1-22
Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Bonds of Affection!”
We are given no commentary on this decisive utterance. Nor has anything in the narrative prepared us for this response. Perhaps she even surprised Naomi. The four terse lines concern travel (“go”), residence (“lodge”), community solidarity (“people”), and faith (“God”). The detail is complete and covers every possible aspect of their relationship: Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
