We are pushing further into this Lenten season, now entering the second week.  I’d argue the Gospel lesson includes one of, if not the most famous lines of Scripture.

Here’s what the lectionary offers us this week:

• Genesis 12:1-4a
• Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
• John 3:1-17
• Psalm 121

Words of the instructor from my Old Testament course run through my head as I read the OT lesson for this week.  Abraham was blessed to be a blessing.  It truly is how we should think of ourselves, that when we are blessed, it should be a call for us to bless others.  Prior to the part about the blessing is a direction from God, telling Abraham to move away from the land that he knows.  That would be a tough ask for us, if we thought about getting the same directive.   I think about missionaries and about pastors who take calls to places far away and that they do not know, simply and truly out of the guidance and calling of God.  

The Psalm also pushes strongly on my memory, although this one is much more recent.  Psalm 121 was one of the readings at Susan Fox’s funeral.   What a great reminder.  I was just praying with someone last week about a situation involving their adult child that they were fretting about.  We were reminded in our time of reflection that all too often we want to control things and when we cannot, we get antsy.  As believers in a God of great faithfulness and provision, why is it at times so difficult to turn everything over to God, to have faith in his will and live into the always quoted section of Jeremiah that God has plans for us, plans for good and not for evil?

It is easy to see the connection between the Epistle and the Old Testament readings.  Just like it was a good reminder that we are blessed to be a blessing, it is a good reminder of just how it was that Abraham was considered faithful.  Paul is poking holes in the idea that strictly following the law is what it means to be faithful…Abraham didn’t have the law to follow.  Abraham was, however, obedient.  We addressed that in the Genesis text, where he listens to God, believes that God is true to his word and is willing to pick up everything (or nothing) and leave the land he has grown up in and done very well in.  There’s a big difference between following rules for the sake of following rules and being obedient because you have faith that God’s guidance is better than your own.

You all know I do not believe in coincidence, so follow along with me here.  As if the Psalm wasn’t a recent enough memory, part of the Gospel lesson was what Pastor Rebecca used for her message on Ash Wednesday.  She kicked off Lent with the pinhole of light that is typically barely visible as we begin the season.  Of course, by the time we get to the end of Lent and hit Easter, we move from a dim light at the end of a tunnel to a light much more like what we talked about on Transfiguration Sunday a couple weeks ago.  This reading comes in three sections for me.  You have the born-again discussion, then there’s what can be a real self-convicting part where Jesus talks about how if we cannot believe the things he has done here on earth, how in the world can we truly believe in heaven?  It’s a question worth pondering this week.

These are my first blush thoughts on each of the four readings recommended this week by the Revised Common Lectionary.  I will be studying each of them further this week and I invite you to do the same.   Come out on Sunday morning at 10:30 and see if I learned anything 😊