Today in the Spirit

In Year C, the Sunday lectionary in the stretch of Ordinary Time that follows Pentecost or Trinity Sunday features Gospel readings from the special section of Luke (9:51-18:14) containing mostly narratives unique to that New Testament Gospel. In this section, we find our Lord, as he approaches Jerusalem for the last time, alternately conversing with…

At Proper 15C, the church brings us in our walking with Jesus in worship to the end of what appears to be a parenthetical discourse delivered to his disciples while he is teaching crowds somewhere in Judea. In the first part of the assigned Gospel reading from Luke 12:49-56, Jesus passionately urges his disciples to…

Moving forward in Luke’s detailed section of Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem, we come to Proper 14C to more intense teaching directed to the disciples alone. In the assigned Gospel reading out of Luke 12:32-40, we enter into the middle of a discourse on radical commitment to gospel service in the world. Using both intimate and…

Moving ahead to Proper 13C, the church assigns the parable of the rich fool from Luke 12:13-21 as the central reading in our worship. This parable, found only in Luke, is our Lord’s response to an unnamed man in a crowd demanding that he settle an inheritance dispute with a brother. The story of a…

We continue this Sunday with meditation on Jesus’ teachings on discipleship from Luke. The assigned Gospel reading from Luke 11:1-13 focuses on prayer, including material found in Matthew and two brief parables that appear only in Luke. So, in response to the disciples’ request that Jesus teach them to pray, Jesus responds with the words…

At Proper 11C, the Gospel reading takes us to another passage unique to Luke, where Jesus teaches on radical discipleship. In Luke 10:38-42, we overhear the conversation between Martha and Jesus after Martha vociferously complains to Jesus that her sister, Mary, should help with the “serving” duties. Jesus defends Mary’s decision to “listen to the…

At Proper 10C, we come to the gospel narrative in Luke 10:25-37 in which Jesus responds to the test of “a lawyer” who asks, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (25); and later, “And who is my neighbor?” (28). Our Lord delivers the Parable of the Good Samaritan as a dramatic example of…

In each of the three years of the lectionary cycle, we are assigned for our worship one account of Jesus sending disciples to engage in ministry on their own: the twelve in Matthew 10 at Year A, Proper 6; the twelve in Mark 9 at Year B, Proper 10; and the seventy-two in Luke 10…

At Proper 8C, we move as worshipers to the place in Luke’s narrative where Jesus intentionally moves his ministry out of Galilee in the north to Judea and Jerusalem in the south. The assigned Gospel reading out of Luke 9:51-62 begins, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, [Jesus] set his…

The Easter season ended very late this year, so we start into the ordinary (numbered) propers after Trinity Sunday at Week 7. In our walk with Jesus in Year C through the Gospel of Luke, we come now to the tail end of our Lord’s Galilean ministry. The assigned Gospel reading from Luke 9:18-24 covers…