Second Sunday of Easter, Cycle A
The primary theme of these texts is, implicitly or explicitly, the resurrection of Jesus as the Risen Christ. Nothing in the texts or in our current situations should be permitted to detract from our clear proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus as the Risen Christ this coming weekend.
Passion Sunday / Palm Sunday, Cycle A
As we become increasingly aware of the oppressive political and economic situation in which the Jesus of history and the other Jews of his time and place lived, we recognize that when Jesus called upon his fellow Jews to believe that soon the Lord God would be coming to them in some wonderful way, and that when the Lord God would come to rule over them (in the kingdom of God) the oppressive Romans would be gone, he became not only a religious leader but also a prominent political leader of his people and a significant political threat to the Roman occupational forces and to the small number among his fellow Jews who were cooperating fully with the Romans.
Fifth Sunday in Lent, Cycle A
Probably the most important common factor in these four texts is the concept of restoration to life. Of course, each text depicts restoration to life in a specific situation, and the situation of each of us is unique and different from each of the situations in these biblical texts. Therefore, we have rich resources available for use in our proclamations this coming weekend of the message that God restores life also among us in our times.
Fourth Sunday in Lent, Cycle A
In the Older Testament texts of Psalm 23 and of 1 Samuel 16:1-13 the Lord God overcomes the darkness of the “valley of the shadow of death” and provides hope for all of our days. In the Newer Testament texts of Ephesians 5:8-14 and John 9:1-42 the Lord Jesus overcomes basically the same “darkness” and provides the same “hope.”
Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle A
The connection between the Exodus 17 and John 4 texts is clearly the concept of life-supporting water in each of them. The mention of Meribah and of Massah in Psalm 95:8 links that psalm to Exodus 17:1-7. The connections between the Romans 5 text and the other three are tenuous. Perhaps an allusion to the concept of life-supporting water in Exodus 17 and John 4 can be made in the use of the reference in Romans 5:5 to the love of God being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us, or in the emphasis in Romans 5:1-5 on hope.
