Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: September 7 and 14
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.
September 7, 2025
Semicontinuous: Jeremiah 18:1-11
Walter Brueggemann, “A Preacher’s Dilemma: Verse 12?”
But of course, the hard part of all of this is the extent to which Christian preaching should sound “judgment” upon a society that is willfully arraigned against God’s will for mercy, justice, and peace. Such declaration of divine judgment needs to be done reluctantly and soberly, so that it is not simply the anger of the preacher. But such truth-telling is essential to our honest rendering of our world before God. Without such an utterance the church may become “the happiest place in town” that simply colludes in the denial that permeates society. Soon or late the congregation must face the reality that our socio-political economic life is a contradiction of the purposes of God.
Walter Brueggemann, “Unshakeable Systems?!?”
Our pastor, on that Sunday, let this tormented reasoning of Jeremiah make contact with the systemic racism in our society. One might indeed judge that systemic racism is an “unshakeable system” among us that evokes divine judgment. But the prophet allows that such divine judgment might not pertain if the community “turns” from its racism. Conversely, if God does good to a society, but it persists in racism, then that positive divine resolve will be altered into devastating judgment.
[Editor’s note: There were plenty of worries in congregational ministry keeping me up at night, but preaching in front of Walter Brueggemann, Sunday after Sunday, was thankfully never one of them!]
Paired: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Walter Brueggemann, “Destiny Not Fate”
In the covenantal-prophetic-apostolic tradition, ministry is the process of permitting members of the body to accept agency for themselves and for their neighbors. In that world, there is no cause — and no excuse! — for abdication or resignation. In the world of the gospel, we are not fated like “Medes and Persians.” We are, rather, as the beloved of God, destined toward wellbeing. We need only choose that wellbeing in active, daring, wise ways. That is how we may live and prosper in our present “land of promise” (see Deuteronomy 30:20).
Walter Brueggemann, “Two Farmers… Two Ways”
The term “Canaanite” in this usage is not at all an ethnic term, but refers to socioeconomic practices in which all of life is reduced to commodity that can be used to exhaustion, accumulated without end, and that readily turns neighbors into greedy, fearful competitors. … The reason that this declaration is so urgent is that the “Canaanite” alternative appears to offer a life of ease, comfort, and security, when in fact it is a way of the destruction of self, neighbor, community, and eventually of creation.
September 14, 2025
Paired: Exodus 32:7-14
Walter Brueggemann, “The Golden Calf and 2020”
Moses interrupts what scholars call the “lawsuit” of indictment and sentence. Moses dares to question the appropriateness and wisdom God’s anger. This daring interruption by Moses is so deeply Jewish! It would not happen among conventional Christians, because conventional Christians are excessively pious and deferential. But Moses is resolutely Jewish in this moment of covenantal engagement. He knows that he can (and must!) address God and call God to account. He puts two questions to God: Why be angry with this people that you have made and saved? Why give ammunition to the Egyptians? … The two questions of Moses remain unanswered as though YHWH needs time to ponder. Without waiting, Moses promptly issues three imperatives to God. Yes, imperatives! Turn … from your anger; Change … your mind; Remember … the book of Genesis.
