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Lectionary Notes - Fifth Sunday after
Pentecost
(view sermon
or sermon or sermon
for this text)
Readings for
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, 7/9/06:
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Psalm 48, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10,
Mark 6:1-13
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10:
- "bone and flesh" - it must have given David great comfort to
hear these words of commitment from the tribes, even after they had served
under Saul. We don't always have such great success at transitioning
leadership in the church, do we? Of course, with Saul's death, this transition
wasn't exactly smooth either...
- In verse 2, the people say it was David who "led out Israel and brought it
in" - tasks of a shepherd. This imagery sticks with David throughout his life
- it is how he views God (Psalm 23) and how God has called him to be.
- "30 years old" - Wow. At 27 as I write this, I can't imagine
being King of such a messed up country at 30. Impressive.
Psalm 48:
- This psalm focuses mostly on the beauty of Jerusalem, the holy place, and
Mount Zion, a holy and loved place in Jerusalem. Perhaps the biblical
equivalent of "America the Beautiful," which happens to be my favorite
patriotic song - focusing on what we love about our homeland and our
thankfulness for it, as opposed to focusing on our superiority over others.
- Still, perhaps this psalm is a little "Star-Spangled Banner" - we do get a
bit of enemy talk in here (what is a psalm without it, right?)
- What's your favorite holy place? What's your favorite convergence of home
and God?
2 Corinthians 12:2-10:
- "caught up to the third heaven" - Paul clearly has a different
understanding of cosmology than do we today - check out
Chris
Haslam's notes on the topic.
- "thorn in the flesh" - I think we can all relate to Paul here,
even if we'll never know exactly what Paul considered his "thorn in the
flesh." We all know our thorn or thorns. What's yours? How do you deal with
it?
- "boast" - Someday I have to count the number of times Paul uses the word
'boast' and the number of times he is writing about how he's really not
boasting!
- "whenever I am weak, then I am strong" - a very Jesus-like paradoxical
statement
Mark 6:1-13:
- Jesus' experience of going home and finding people less-than-welcoming is
not unusual. Things are never the same when you leave and go back again, are
they?
- The disciples here make an initial transition to apostles - ones sent.
Christopher Moore in his novel Lamb, has a great passage about this,
which you can read in a sermon of mine here.
- Think of how detailed our preparations for traveling are these days.
Itineraries and packing and repacking and maps and GPS - could you go out as
unprepared as Jesus sent the disciples? And yet, they do it, prepared in the
ways that count, as much as they can be.
- How prepared can you really be, anyway? Before actually starting my first
day as a pastor, I still felt unprepared. Trained, equipped - but nothing can
totally prepare you for the real thing. You just have to do it. So it is with
being sent by Jesus. We just have to do it.
Pastor’s Note: (I use the Greek-English
Lexicon from Liddell and Scott, the “little Liddell”
and the Metzger et. al Greek New Testament in my translation work.)
Lectionary
Notes are from Rev. Beth Quick.
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