Proper 11 | Ordinary Time 16 - A
Sandra Herrmann
Genesis 28:10-19a
What is the connection between heaven and earth? What makes Jacob think that he is the chosen one through whom the nation of Israel will come into being? Genesis is full of these questions, with story explanations for the reason things are as they are. This story, which we traditionally call "Jacob's Dream," is one of them. (Although the translation in the King James Version and carried forward out of respect for tradition is incorrectly rendered as "ladder" actually should be read as "stairway" or "ramp.")
We need to begin our reading of this event back in 25:19, where we learn that Jacob and his fraternal twin, Esau, had fought each other even in the womb. Their struggle is paralleled by their parents choosing favorites in 27:30-40, we...
What is the connection between heaven and earth? What makes Jacob think that he is the chosen one through whom the nation of Israel will come into being? Genesis is full of these questions, with story explanations for the reason things are as they are. This story, which we traditionally call "Jacob's Dream," is one of them. (Although the translation in the King James Version and carried forward out of respect for tradition is incorrectly rendered as "ladder" actually should be read as "stairway" or "ramp.")
We need to begin our reading of this event back in 25:19, where we learn that Jacob and his fraternal twin, Esau, had fought each other even in the womb. Their struggle is paralleled by their parents choosing favorites in 27:30-40, we...
R. Craig Maccreary
I suppose all of us have particular objects of our venom and disgust. Whenever said
object comes up in conversation unless we are prepared for a battle royal, loss of
friendship, and a potential conviction for felony assault, we find ourselves saying, "Don't
get me started." When it comes to the matter at hand we better not get started because we
have no idea how things might end. Here in New England you can easily make a
conversation go nuclear by simply mentioning the New York Yankees and the Boston
Red Sox in the same breath. I went to college in the South and a combination of Duke
and the University of North Carolina produces similar combustible results. In the Old
West it was cattlemen and sheepherders that wound up the voltage of any conversation.
The principle is simply...
Wayne Brouwer
In Morris West’s novel The Clowns of God, there’s a powerful scene where a father and his daughter are having an argument. She tells him that she’s going to go to Paris to live with her boyfriend. He won’t let her. Why would she want to do something like that?
“Because I’m afraid,” she says.
“Afraid? Whatever are you afraid of?”
She says: I’m “afraid of getting married and having children and trying to make a home, while the whole world could tumble round our ears in a day.” She goes on: “You older ones don’t understand. You’ve survived a war. You’ve built things. You’ve raised families. . . . But look at the world you’ve left to us! You’ve given us everything except tomorrow.”
“Everything except tomorrow.” And tomorrow is the one...
“Because I’m afraid,” she says.
“Afraid? Whatever are you afraid of?”
She says: I’m “afraid of getting married and having children and trying to make a home, while the whole world could tumble round our ears in a day.” She goes on: “You older ones don’t understand. You’ve survived a war. You’ve built things. You’ve raised families. . . . But look at the world you’ve left to us! You’ve given us everything except tomorrow.”
“Everything except tomorrow.” And tomorrow is the one...
Mark Ellingsen
The happy surprises of faith — a word we need in the midst of the despair and suspicions of others which have characterized 2020.
Genesis 28:10-19a
The First Lesson is the product of one of the four distinct oral traditions which gave rise to the first five books of the Bible. This account of Jacob’s dream of the ladder is likely the work of the 8th-century BC source designated as E, for its use of the Hebrew term Elohim to designate God.
Genesis 28:10-19a
The First Lesson is the product of one of the four distinct oral traditions which gave rise to the first five books of the Bible. This account of Jacob’s dream of the ladder is likely the work of the 8th-century BC source designated as E, for its use of the Hebrew term Elohim to designate God.
David Kalas
Every parent is familiar with the backseat refrains. “Are we there yet?” “How much farther is it?” “How soon will we be there?” It is standard fare on a family journey to field the continual questions that are born out of both impatience and excitement.
Children are not to be faulted for this, of course, as though it is peculiar to their age. The adults are just as impatient and excited, but they don’t have to express it aloud: they just check the odometer, the clock, and the GPS. And it may be, in fact, that the adults check more often than the children ask!
In any case, this is a natural part of being on a trip. We have a sense of our destination, and we are eager to get there. And in our eagerness, we may also feel and exhibit a certain restlessness. It is a...
Children are not to be faulted for this, of course, as though it is peculiar to their age. The adults are just as impatient and excited, but they don’t have to express it aloud: they just check the odometer, the clock, and the GPS. And it may be, in fact, that the adults check more often than the children ask!
In any case, this is a natural part of being on a trip. We have a sense of our destination, and we are eager to get there. And in our eagerness, we may also feel and exhibit a certain restlessness. It is a...
Schuyler Rhodes
It has gotten very crowded out there in the last century. Oh, to look around you wouldn't see this particular overcrowding problem. That's because it is invisible to our eyes. But if you want to do any number of things that are now commonplace in our twenty-first-century world, then you are going to feel the squeeze.
The "out there" that has gotten so crowded is the "airwaves." We have found so many uses for radio frequencies that there just is not enough "bandwidth" to go around. First there was just radio and then it was television. Now there is also "high-definition television" (HDTV) that requires different and broader spectrum frequencies than traditional television signals we still have with us. A battle has raged over the past several years between "micro broadcasters...
The "out there" that has gotten so crowded is the "airwaves." We have found so many uses for radio frequencies that there just is not enough "bandwidth" to go around. First there was just radio and then it was television. Now there is also "high-definition television" (HDTV) that requires different and broader spectrum frequencies than traditional television signals we still have with us. A battle has raged over the past several years between "micro broadcasters...
It has gotten very crowded out there in the last century. Oh, to look around you wouldn't see this particular overcrowding problem. That's because it is invisible to our eyes. But if you want to do any number of things that are now commonplace in our 21st-century world, then you are going to feel the squeeze.
The "out there" that has gotten so crowded is the "airwaves." We have found so many uses for radio frequencies that there just is not enough "bandwidth" to go around. First there was just radio, and then it was television. Now there is also "high-definition television" that requires different and broader spectrum frequencies than the traditional television signals we still have with us. A battle has raged over the past several years between "micro broadcasters" using very...
The "out there" that has gotten so crowded is the "airwaves." We have found so many uses for radio frequencies that there just is not enough "bandwidth" to go around. First there was just radio, and then it was television. Now there is also "high-definition television" that requires different and broader spectrum frequencies than the traditional television signals we still have with us. A battle has raged over the past several years between "micro broadcasters" using very...
There are certainly times when we can readily distinguish good folks from bad folks. The old western movies made it simple by dressing the good guys in white hats and the bad guys in black hats. In more modern movies you can usually tell the difference by whether the actor wears a smile or a sneer.
Some people in real life determine that Christians are the good ones and that the bad ones, the ones who cause all the trouble in the world, are those of other faiths or of no faith at all. Yet in this century we have seen Christians carry out atrocities against others. The Holocaust in Nazi Germany comes to mind. So also does the recent fighting in the former Yugoslavia where the Christians of Serbia have been committing atrocities against their Muslim neighbors in Bosnia and Kosovo...
Some people in real life determine that Christians are the good ones and that the bad ones, the ones who cause all the trouble in the world, are those of other faiths or of no faith at all. Yet in this century we have seen Christians carry out atrocities against others. The Holocaust in Nazi Germany comes to mind. So also does the recent fighting in the former Yugoslavia where the Christians of Serbia have been committing atrocities against their Muslim neighbors in Bosnia and Kosovo...
Our texts for this Sunday continue the theme from a week ago, namely, that Christians are engaged in a struggle, but that God is with us to help us. Today the thought is carried a step further. It is in the secret, mystical, often difficult-to-describe side of the Christian experience that we learn to know the work of God. The dream of Jacob, Paul's word about the "witness of the Spirit," the parable of the seed growing in the midst of the weeds -- all are signs of the work of God in the life of believers, a work that often is not apparent from the outside.
It would be easier for us if we preached only on the Gospel Lesson for this Sunday. After all, who believes that God actually communicates through a dream? There are lessons to be learned from "Jacob's Ladder," but we...
It would be easier for us if we preached only on the Gospel Lesson for this Sunday. After all, who believes that God actually communicates through a dream? There are lessons to be learned from "Jacob's Ladder," but we...
I am certain that when I hear some people speak of the Christian life, I am hearing them say that nothing less than perfection is allowed. We are regaled with the rules; then we are reminded that if we depend on the presence of the Spirit, there will be no problem. It seems as though we are being driven into a corner from which there is no escape.
As one reads the New Testament, in the order in which it was likely written, one discovers that there is a great concern for personal behavior. There is no compromising the call to perfection, but there is also the acknowledgment that it is not likely to happen.
For instance, take another look at Matthew's Parable of the Weeds or the Parable of the Net and you will see that he is struggling to define the nature of the...
As one reads the New Testament, in the order in which it was likely written, one discovers that there is a great concern for personal behavior. There is no compromising the call to perfection, but there is also the acknowledgment that it is not likely to happen.
For instance, take another look at Matthew's Parable of the Weeds or the Parable of the Net and you will see that he is struggling to define the nature of the...
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