Welcome to Holy Textures - Year A, Season of Lent - Holy Week

Holy Textures is a spot for my musings on the various Biblical texts that come our way through the Revised Common Lectionary.

My goal is to provide timely, short, easy to use and thought-provoking background commentary for your sermon or bible study preparation.

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Year A - Season of Lent - 2011

The 40 days of Lent actually do NOT include the Sundays. So the Sundays are referred to as being "in" Lent. For example, "Lent 2," means, "The second Sunday in Lent."

This means the Sundays are always a mini-celebration of the resurrection - even in Lent. So, while we are preparing ourselves for the walk to Jerusalem and all that will happen during Holy Week, there is no need to pretend that we don't know about, and are not already celebrating, Jesus' resurrection.

The fact that Lent began so late this year has given me time to give a close reading of the Holy Week texts and background information. I come away even more amazed at the courage of Jesus to voluntarily face the torture and humiliation of Roman execution on a cross, in order to remain faith to God's calling - God's purpose - for him: To proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

As usual with the Season of Lent, we get to spend time with the Gospel of John.

I like to think of John as like a good day at the spa: Soaking in the swirling eddies and quiet back pools of his repetitive, non-sequitor, images and stories.

John wants us to really GET the life that is Jesus.

What could be more refreshing than that?

Ash Wednesday
March 9, 2011
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21  
"Lent: The restraint that frees. Three practices to refresh our relationship with God: Almsgiving, Prayer, and Fasting."

Lent 1
March 13, 2011
Matthew 4:1-11  
"In this passage Jesus begins to demonstrate in words and deeds that he is indeed worthy of the high honour ascribed to him by angels and voices from Heaven - the Messiah, God's Son, the Beloved."

Lent 2
March 20, 2011
John 3:1-17, Alternate Reading 1 
"Being born anew / from above is a huge transformation, since it means quite literally starting over with a new 'family of origin.' ... (It) relocates our identity and resets possibilities for our character and life choices / opportunities."

Matthew 17:1-9, Alternate Reading 2 
"I wonder how much in our heart of hearts, we are still cheering for Jesus as the triumphant Victor, and still longing for a Messiah, when God has already given us all that God has to give: the Beloved?"

Lent 3
March 27, 2011
John 4:5-42 
"A good title for a sermon this week would be, "The Other Good Samaritan." The unnamed woman who grows from a shunned outsider to an evangelist."  

Lent 4
April 3, 2011
John 9:1-41    
"Jeremiah 5:21 would be a good text to introduce this story: 'Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but do not see, who have ears, but do not hear.' Jesus can cure the blind. Getting us to see past our own self-interest - to see the glory of God in the lowest and the least - now THAT would be a real miracle." 

Lent 5
April 10, 2011
John 11:1-45    
"This story about Lazarus shares much in common with that of the Samaritan woman at the well. With the Samaritan woman the issue was seeing Jesus as the source of living water as compared to ordinary water. Here the issue is to see Jesus as the source of living life as compared to ordinary life." 

Lent 6
April 17, 2011
Liturgy of the Palms:
Matthew 21:1-11 
"Now Jerusalem is not a large city. And what the authors of the Bible take for granted and fail to mention is that while Jesus is parading in on a donkey through one of the back gates, on the other side of the city Pilate is parading in on a war horse accompanied by a squadron or two of battle-hardened Roman soldiers. Do you think anyone at Pilate's parade heard about Jesus' parade? Heard what the crowd had shouted? Let's see what unfolds in the week ahead."
  
Liturgy of the Passion:
Matthew 26:14 -- 27:66, Alternate Reading 1.
Matthew 27:11-54, Alternate Reading 2.
"The Jesus who died on Good Friday was still dead on Easter Sunday. But the embodied passion of Jesus that did not hesitate in the face of humiliating, torturous death did not die on Good Friday, and was seen to be actually, factually, really alive on Easter Sunday." 

Holy Week

Holy Maundy Thursday
April 21, 2011
John 13:1-17, 31b-35    
"Fortunately, this passage actually has TWO new commandments: 1) Love one another as I have loved you. And, 2) Forgive one another as I have forgiven you. Christ-like-love is the goal. Forgiveness is the salve that heals brokenness and makes love possible once again." 

Good Friday
April 22, 2011
John 18:1 -- 19:42    
"To outsiders, a battered and broken Jesus could no longer hold his head up and died in humiliation and defeat. But to those who believe into him, a true Son of God has completed his great work, and with a royal nod (and maybe a mischievous wink?) has passed on his Spirit so that we too might have life - the life that was in Jesus." 

Holy Saturday
April 23, 2011
Matthew 27:57-66, Alternate Reading 1.   
"And just in case we might think that later events were a hoax, Matthew relates that the Jerusalem authorities take steps to guard the tomb." 
  
John 19:38-42, Alternate Reading 2.
"The crucial piece of background information is the belief that the flesh contained a person's evil deeds. And the year-long rotting of the flesh was a purging of these deeds, leaving the bones (which contained the personality of the person) ready to receive the new body fashioned by God at the resurrection. But the resurrection of Jesus on the third day will interrupt this process before it starts."