More Holy week Readings

Ps.321:9-16
This can be a reading for the passion Sunday turn many of us prefer. I always recall Bill Clemenson saying that he went that way, for how much could you talk about a parade.
Again, the plurality of psalms are laments. We then learn that we can put even the hardest time into the envelope of prayer.

1) Famed exegete Mick Saunders reminded me of the important of reading in light of context when he applied the Ezekiel 37 passage to folks in a nursing home. In similar fashion, this psalm opens up if we place it in that particular place. of course we have these feeling irrespective of condition, as when we are depressed. when my brother died, for some days, it felt as if I had been elbowed at the sternum, bond-deep hurt. for those whose minds go to illness and emotion, I then got pleurisy some time after.

2) broken vessel could lead to a discussion of feeling useless, or cracking up, of being refuse

3) False accusation continue to be a problem. How do we handle them?

4) After all this we emerge with trust in God. What impact does having one's times in the hand of God affect you? How about a congregation? Perhaps the sheer catharsis brings us to this position. Perhaps it is a counterweight to the misery.

5) Most vividly, apply this section to Jesus in the garden. Consider how some of the Reformers saw the descent into hell as reflecting feeling like this in the garden.

 

Is. 50:4-9

This is part of the 3rd servant song.

1)how do we learn to sustain the weary with a word? When are words insufficient?

2)How are we open to and resistant against God waking the ear? What serves to waken your powers of listening? Look at World Cafe suggestions for learning to waken the ear in listening.

3) V.6 puts us in the place of the good who suffer, including Jesus of course. Those of us with beards get a sense of the eye-watering discomfort of having it pulled out

4) When do we set our face like flint. When should we not? Does Jesus do this in various pieces of his trials?

5) Is v. 8 bravado or not?

6) v. 9 is a sense of a higher law behind the servant. Think of historical figures who were confident they were on the the right side of history and have been vindicated, say in civil rights for women and African-Americans.

Some lesser used Holy Saturday readings
Gen.7-9 selections
Ok, the Noah story is a parade example of different streams of tradition being sewn together into a final form (typically J and P).
7:4-Fretheim, God and Creation- notice the temporal limit placed on the cosmic catastrophe.
7:11 this does not sound like a cleansing at this point but an undoing of creation
One cannot help but think of remnant theology, post exile, being applied to this mythic account. Notice that not only humanity but all of living creatures are kept safe. It is not accident for the church to be an ark, a container, especially with the ritual point of ark of the covenant. In our time, is the church being called as an ark to help save and protect god's creation?
4) All of this water imagery is picked up in baptism for Easter as well.
8:6-18 has a parallel with other ancient Near East creation accounts. All of the sevens may well refer to the seven days of creation in Gen. 1
 When released we return to the fruitful and multiply blessing
9:8-13 note this is a covenant with all creation.God invokes a self-limitation here. Fretheim calls it a recharacterization of relationship (82)
The Ezekiel reading (34:24-28) renews the concerns of the Noah covenant in an exilic framework. It too looks to a covenant of peace. notice that all of nature is safer, not just human violence. How does Easter extend the covenant of peace? the angel tells the women, as does Jesus to fear not, here it is again. How does Easter fit with "none shall make them afraid?"
we also get a limitation of divine arbitrary power with the emphasis on regular, predictable natural law.