UNIFORM LESSON FOR June 17, 2018 Scripture passage and lesson focus:Matthew 15:1-9 Presbyterians have traditionally looked to Scripture as the sole basis for orthodox doctrine. Sola scriptura was the watchword of our Calvinist ancestors in the faith. Our pastors, elders, and deacons vow to follow Scripture as their guide in leading God’s people. To know what God’s justice requires, faithful Christians have consistently looked to the example of Jesus as documented in the canonical Gospels and explained by the apostle Paul. In a definitive way Jesus proclaimed and practiced the justice and righteousness of God as taught in the Law of Moses and in the writings of the prophets. So it might appear that all Christians need to do is ask: What would Jesus do? As basic and straightforward as that sounds, it is easier said than done. Deep differences about how to interpret and apply Scripture have divided Christians just as they divided God’s chosen people, the Jews. The word of God must … [Read more...]

UNIFORM LESSON FOR June 10, 2018 Scripture passage and lesson focus: Matthew 13:24-29, 36-43 One thing that most politicians and preachers know is that a very effective way to make a point is to tell a good story. Stories can help a speaker connect with an audience in a personal and memorable way. Perhaps you can recall a sermon in which a well-told story had a “gotcha” moment that opened your heart to a deeper understanding of God’s grace. Jesus was certainly a very good storyteller. He grew up in a Jewish culture that loved good stories told by wise teachers. The Gospels tell us that Jesus frequently told parables, a special type of story that could focus the attention of his hearers on a single insight and elicit a personal response. Biblical scholars are aware that the parables of Jesus lose some of their impact when they are reduced to folksy illustrations of general moral principles or allegorized into clever symbols of proper or improper behavior. The ancient and … [Read more...]

UNIFORM LESSON FOR June 3, 2018 Scripture passage and lesson focus: Matthew 12:1-14 The next several lessons are based on Scripture passages that have as their theme God’s justice and mercy. God’s justice in Scripture is enshrined in the Law of Moses. What justice is and how it is to be applied to human experience have been discussed since the days of the prophets by rabbis and sages, by apostles and martyrs, by theologians and philosophers. Mercy, too, has always received careful attention. As the psalmist noted: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you.” Shakespeare’s lines from “The Merchant of Venice” have never been more timely than they are today: “And earthly power doth then show likest God’s when mercy seasons justice.” Jesus and his earliest followers had numerous occasions to respond when their behavior collided with the beliefs of some religious leaders who equated justice with their opinion about the proper … [Read more...]

UNIFORM LESSON FOR May 27, 2018 Scripture passage and lesson focus: Psalm 34:1-10; Hebrews 2:17-18 No book in the Bible reflects the full range of human emotions more poignantly and powerfully than Psalms. This ancient compilation of inspired Hebrew songs and poems reflects the highs and lows of human experience. In Psalms, God is always there even when our human ability to sense the divine presence is at its lowest ebb. As Psalm 139:7-12 beautifully declares, there is no place we can go to escape God’s loving presence. This psalm opens with a hymn of praise to God for deliverance from difficulties. It concludes with a didactic section assuring the righteous that God is their defender and rescuer. The exact structure of this psalm is impossible to duplicate in an English translation. Every other Hebrew line in this poem starts with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet with one exception. This acrostic structure may have been an aid to recitation or memorization. Psalm … [Read more...]

UNIFORM LESSON FOR May 20, 2018 Scripture passage and lesson focus: Leviticus 25:1-12 Current economic realities compel many people to rent a condominium or a home in which to live rather than owning it. A renter pays a landlord to occupy a property as a tenant. In most cases a contract spells out the rights and responsibilities of the tenant and the landlord. Such contracts are typically quite detailed and describe what both the landlord and the tenant are obligated to do. Our lesson from Leviticus assumes that all Israelites were renters. They lived as tenants on land that God owned. Leviticus 25:23 spells that out very clearly: “For the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.” Having been rescued from slavery in Egypt and led through the wilderness to a rich promised land, the Israelites developed an identity as God’s people that made them different from all the other people of the ancient Near East. As the third book in the Torah, Leviticus is a key part of … [Read more...]

UNIFORM LESSON FOR May 13, 2018 Scripture passage and lesson focus: Leviticus 2:14; 23:9-14, 22 Leviticus is probably not near the top of the list of biblical books to which Christians turn for moral or theological instruction. Aside from a few occasionally quoted individual verses (such as “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”), Presbyterians rarely hear sermons or attend a Bible study class on passages from the book of Leviticus. Although Leviticus is a manual that contains many regulations and rules for the priests who were the worship leaders of ancient Israel, as the authors of “A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament” have written, “Leviticus has more of a life-giving word and world to offer than its formal character suggests.” Directed to all of the people of Israel as well as the priests, this book has a lot to say about God’s forgiveness, about holiness that has both an individual and a communal dimension and about the distinctive calling God’s … [Read more...]