Lent 2C, March 16, 2025.  The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18. I am your shield.
Philippians 3:17-4:1.  He will transform the body of our humiliation.
Luke 13:31-35.  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

O God whose glory is always mercy, 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.

Today’s choice of a Gospel text for the second Sunday in Lent always strikes me as a little jarring. It’s jarring to begin the first week of Lent with Luke’s account of Jesus resisting temptations in the wilderness before his ministry began and then to skip, over his teaching and healing all around the Galilee and beyond, to the end of Chapter 13 at the middle of the Gospel of Luke.  (Next week the scheduled portion is back at the beginning of that chapter.) The slow, almost leisurely pace of Jesus’ ministry in Luke with magnificent story-telling, prayer, and Sabbath meals is completely eclipsed in our Lenten readings from Luke’s Gospel. Our lectionary saves all those stories for the summer. Continue reading →