Tag Archives: desolation

Handle with prayer!

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Christmas 1C, 29 December 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

  • Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3. I will greatly rejoice in the LORD.
  • Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7. So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
  • John 1:1-18. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Our lectionary, which assigns the prologue to the Gospel of John for the first Sunday in Christmas, baffles me. Since we’re in a Gospel of Luke year, why not the story of the presentation of Jesus as an infant in the Temple eight days after he was born? The answer, I guess, is that story will be read on February 2, which is the Feast of the Presentation. Continue reading →

Always a Catch

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Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany (C)
February 10, 2019

Isaiah 6:1-8[9-13]  Keep listening but do not comprehend.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
Luke 5:1-11  Put out into the deep water.

O God of the deep, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

 

This morning we heard a part of Isaiah that I bet most of you are not familiar with. The verses that follow the famous call story of Isaiah, explain just exactly what Isaiah is being called to do: say to the people “listen but don’t comprehend, look but don’t understand,” so they will not turn and be healed. “How long, O Lord?” Isaiah asks. Until the desolation is complete, says the Holy One. Until there’s nothing left. If Isaiah agrees to be sent, this is what he can expect if he does his job: God’s Word will not be comprehended. People will not repent. I hear echoes of this story in Luke and in our own time. Is this prescriptive or descriptive? I don’t know – but I find it true.

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