Leanne Shawler, Artist

Perhaps the first rule of blogging the lectionary, especially if it's gonna sound like a sermon is, that it is like writing a novel. For God's sake, never show anyone the first draft, even if you think it's a second or third draft.  So now that I've meandered through my issues with John 14:6 yesterday , here is what I hope is a better version. First reading: Acts 7:55-60 Psalm: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 Second reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10 Gospel: John 14:1-14 Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life Such a way as gives us breath; Such a truth as ends all strife, Such a life as killeth death. Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6, NRSV) Here, Jesus is making "I AM" statements which is part of God's Name, the one he revealed to Moses when trying to convince him to go back to Egypt and free God's people. "I AM Who I AM." Jesus is laying claim to the same...

I decided to take a crack at blogging the lectionary along with Rachel Held Evans . This is hard, even for an Education for Ministry graduate, but here goes: First reading: Acts 7:55-60 Psalm: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 Second reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10 Gospel: John 14:1-14 Here's what I don't like about this week's readings: they all appear to be about being "more clued in" than The Others, which is the Jews in the Acts reading (although technically Stephen and the Jesus-followers of the time would have still considered themselves Jews), in the Psalms it is the persecutors who are probably non-Jews but could also be "less than faithful", and in 1 Peter and John, it can be read as: "We Christians got it right and the rest of you are wrong, neener neener". Except Jesus isn't sneering. So what's going on?  I started to read through the various commentary resources  and the words started to blur together, blah blah blah, although all (t...