Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: August 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.
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.]
August 31, 2025
Paired Psalm: Psalm 112
Walter Brueggemann, “Not Numbed Inside”
Compassion is a defining mark of God’s people in the world, a community fully committed to the practice of empathy, capable of being “moved” in response to the pain and need of the world. This people is not unlike this God!
Epistle: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Nadia Bolz-Weber, “The Sacred Act of Having No Idea What We Are Doing”
Maybe the entertaining of disguised angels is a spiritual dialectic in which we too do know when we are bringing someone else’s angel. I think we are perhaps at our most angelic, not when we are convinced of our goodness, but when we are entirely ignorant of it.
Walter Brueggemann, “The Strangeness of the Stranger”
Most important is the admonition of Hebrews 13: Let mutual love (philadelphia; “love of brother”) continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers (philoxenias), for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it (vv.1-2). Of most interest is the fact that “mutual love” (philadelphia) and “hospitality to strangers” (philoxenias) occur together, exactly an antithesis to xenophobia!
Narrative Lectionary: Revelation 21:1-6; 22:1-5
Walter Brueggemann, “On the Unrest In Our Cities”
The new city that will displace the old failed city is a gift from God. It will come “out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2). But the new city is not only a gift. It is also a task assigned by God. We have to do the work.
