Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year A, Volume 2
Overview
With this new lectionary commentary series, Westminster John Knox Press offers the most extensive resource for preaching on the market today. The twelve volumes of this series cover all the Sundays in the three-year lectionary cycle, along with movable occasions, such as Christmas Day, Epiphany, Holy Week, and All Saints’ Day. For each lectionary text, preachers will find four brief essays—one each on the theological, pastoral, exegetical, and homiletical challenges of the text. This gives preachers sixteen different approaches to the proclamation of the Word on any given occasion. The editors and contributors to this series are world-class scholars, pastors, and writers representing a variety of denominations and traditions. And while the twelve volumes of the series will follow the pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary, each volume will contain an index of biblical passages so that non-lectionary preachers, as well as teachers and students, may make use of its contents.
Top Highlights
“There are not really three temptations, but three variations on the same basic theme. The devil has a one-track mind. As from the beginning, he tempts his victims to go for power (‘you will be like God’ [Gen. 3:5]). Evidently he knows there is no surer path to internal contradiction and self-destruction.” (Page 44)
“The invitation is provocative too, because it invites us to open our imaginations and reconsider our relationship with God, which is the central focus of this text, and, indeed, of this Gospel. Jesus invites Nicodemus, as he invites each of us, to come into the light of day and become mature believers, full participants in the abundant life he offers. Jesus knows that neither Nicodemus nor contemporary believers can do this on their own. It is God who will give birth in water and Spirit. Rebirth is God’s gift to give, God’s work to accomplish, and it is God who labors to bring us new life.” (Page 72)
“However legitimate this interpretation might be, reading this text as a command is not the only option. In fact, it may be as legitimate—and certainly as pastoral—to read it as an invitation. When Jesus tells Nicodemus that he needs to be born again by water and Spirit, he is asking Nicodemus to let God work in his life.” (Page 70)
“The raising of Lazarus, then, signifies that God’s eschatological promises are here and now, already, being realized amid and despite the ordinariness of the course of life, which includes illnesses, deaths, and burials like those of Lazarus.” (Page 142)
“The Samaritan woman thinks Jesus is the petitioner and fails to understand that it is not he who needs what only she can provide (water from Jacob’s well), but she who needs what only he can give (living water) (vv. 7–15).” (Page 94)
- Title: Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year A, Volume 2
- Authors: David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor
- Series: Feasting on the Word
- Publisher: Westminster John Knox
- Print Publication Date: 2010
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Common lectionary (1992); Lectionary preaching
- Resource ID: LLS:FEASTWORDA02
- Resource Type: Bible Commentary
- Metadata Last Updated: 2020-11-12T17:53:21Z