By The Rev. Susan Balfour

Beloved,

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ! I give thanks to God for you and for the love of Christ which binds you to each other.

The Revised Common Lectionary is a resource used my many mainstream churches and runs on a three-year cycle. I almost always use the lectionary in preaching and rarely deviate from it. In nearly twenty years of preaching, I have learned that the lectionary is down-right eerie. It always offers some wisdom for our contemporary world at any given time. It always seems to be appropriate, even when we wish it would mind its own business! But if we truly rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our encounters with Scripture, we will find that God indeed has things to say that are profoundly relevant and offer instruction for how we are to be God’s people in difficult times. Sometimes this teaching is hard. Even some of Jesus’ disciples told him “this teaching is too difficult; who can accept it?” His answer; “Are you offended? What if you saw the Son of Man ascending?” Many of them turned back (cf John 6:60-69).

I often find myself indicted as I prepare to teach and preach. Whenever I step into the pulpit, I am as much the intended recipient as you. The sermon is the proclamation of God’s Word, guided by the Holy Spirit, offering the good news of Jesus Christ. It’d be nice if it was always good news for us, but that’s not how Jesus works; as relatively privileged people, a lot of the time the good news is for people who aren’t us. It is in those moments when we are asked how we can be a part of the good news rather than its recipients. In what ways can we be a part of the good news for the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the imprisoned?

That leads me to another salient point: God almost never speaks strictly to the individual. From the very first days of creation, we are created to be in relationship—to form community. When God speaks, God speaks to the community, the society, the nation. The implications of this are that, while we are commended for our personal acts of charity and mercy, God is calling us to a more corporate vision of justice. As charitable and merciful as any one of us is in our personal lives, we are called to work for a just world full of love and mercy—we’re citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, so how do we work for that reality in the midst of our worldly reality?

I encourage you to prayerfully ponder these questions as we seek each week to encounter God in Word and Spirit, worship and sacrament. With prayers that you may find your blessing in being a blessing—

In Christ,

Rev. Susan