Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: August 17 and 24
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.
August 17, 2025
Epistle: Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Amar Peterman, “We Are Not Alone This Lent” [Editor’s note: his reflection applies to other seasons too!]
For believers today, this great cloud of witnesses surely includes the saints of the Scriptures, but it also includes the saints of our recent past. … These include the saints deemed chattel who labored on the plantation, who suffered under exclusion and racism, who fought for the abolition of slavery, who were martyred for pursuing justice – they all stand as a cloud of witnesses around us as we continue in their work.
August 24, 2025
Paired Psalm: Psalm 103:1-8
Walter Brueggemann, “Healing…without Money, without Price (Evil Geniuses Series)”
Of course the church … knows that God’s transformative work is at the same time human transformative work. It is faithful human responsibility to be about the task, as the Psalm says, of forgiveness, healing, redemption, crowning, and satisfying.
Epistle: Hebrews 12:18-29
Walter Brueggemann, “Written Down, Written Up”
The verb is used in these three very different genres of literature; all offer an “enrollment” that is alternative to being “registered” by Caesar. All three usages appeal to the verb apographo, an invitation to a radical choice. One can be “written down” in either book, but not in both. … Belatedly, in our current sociopolitical environment of violence, the either/or of these alternative “writing down” is much clearer to me and more generally. The community of the faithful might indeed be on notice about being “written down” or being “written up.”
Gospel: Luke 13:10-17
Dr. Mothy Varkey, “Break the Rituals, Break the Chain”
For Jesus, contrary to that of the religious leaders who saw the woman’s ‘crippled status-quo’ as ‘normal’, it is not ‘normal’ to be (or to remain) ‘bent-over’ on the sabbath.
[Editor’s note: Dr. Varkey’s essay was published in 2020, which is reflected in his final paragraph regarding World Health Organization protocols around COVID-19. While many of the mitigation practices observed in 2020 have been left behind as COVID has become endemic, both the care for the neighbor reflected in those practices as well as the general invitation to liberate ourselves and others from normalized practices remains pertinent.]
