The Riverside Gathering Posts

As we enter the season of Lent, our liturgical journey takes us from the mountaintop of last Sunday’s Transfiguration directly into the stark wilderness where Jesus faces testing. In Luke’s account, which serves as the Gospel reading appointed for this Sunday [Luke 4:1-13, RCL, Year C], we read that Jesus, “full of the Holy Spirit,” is led by that same Spirit into the wilderness for forty days. What unfolds there is often framed as a battle between good and evil—Jesus versus the devil, each wielding scripture. Jesus answers with words from Deuteronomy [8:3]; the tempter counters with a passage from Psalm 91. To me, what’s interesting isn’t just that both…

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray [Luke 9:28]. In all three annual cycles of the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel reading for the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday is the Transfiguration story. This year, Year C, gives us Luke’s version [Luke 9:28-36, (37-43a). More or less consistent with the versions found in Mark and Matthew, Peter, John, and James witness Jesus transformed in glory. They see Him speaking with Moses and Elijah and, peculiar to Luke’s version, they hear the very voice of God affirming Jesus as beloved Son. It’s a moment…

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt” [Genesis 45:4, a portion of the OT reading assigned for this Sunday, the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year C]. Simple words, spoken in an Egyptian palace, they carried the weight of decades. There were no dramatic flourishes, no accusatory tone—just a plain statement of truth that must have fallen like thunder in his brothers’ ears. They remembered what they had done. They had lived with that knowledge for years, watching their father’s grief, perhaps justifying their actions to themselves in quiet moments.…

One of my closest friends is a devout Roman Catholic who attends Mass almost daily. While I won’t share his name, many of my Gastonia friends will readily know of whom I speak. He and I share not only a hearty friendship, but a spiritual journey. We are sojourners along the same path, and I draw great strength from his "presence," despite the fact that we physically see each other perhaps once each year. This morning, after returning from Mass, he sent me an email that sparked this "Friday meditation." The day’s Gospel reading was Mark 7:31-37, the account of Jesus healing a deaf man with a speech impediment. In…

Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream [Jeremiah 17:7-8a]. It’s 597 BCE. Jerusalem has already witnessed its first deportation to Babylon. Now, its remaining leaders face a wrenching decision: submit to Babylonian domination or gamble everything on Egyptian intervention. In this national crisis, the prophet Jeremiah steps forward. In the text that forms the OT reading for this upcoming Sunday, Jeremiah 17:5-10 [the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year C], he speaks of trust. While others frantically seek political solutions, Jeremiah sees a deeper issue: the tendency…

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst [Luke 5:4-6]. As we turn to the Gospel lesson appointed for this upcoming Sunday [Luke 5:1-11, the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year C], we see that a crowd has assembled on the shores of Lake Gennesaret. They want to hear Jesus teach. The pressing…

Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,”Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy” [Jeremiah 1:4-6]. “If you don’t have a call, then you better get one.” This seminary humor circulates endlessly in divinity schools. Its persistence speaks to a universal truth about the nature of calling. The joke’s irony lies in suggesting we can manufacture what only God can initiate. The tension between human agency and divine calling…

All the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate… They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses …. He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law …. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up … and they bowed their heads and worshiped…

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding [John 2:1-2, a portion of the Gospel reading assigned for this Sunday, the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year C]. In John’s Gospel, the first glimpse we have of Jesus’ public ministry doesn’t arrive with heavenly fanfare. No angels sing. No star guides magi from the East. After the Gospel writer’s soaring prologue about the Word becoming flesh, after John the Baptizer’s testimony and those first curious disciples beginning to follow, after Jesus’ enigmatic promise to Nathanael about “seeing…

Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” [Luke 3:21-22]. Last weekend, as I sat with the lectionary readings for this Sunday's celebration of the Baptism of our Lord [First Sunday after the Epiphany, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, RCL, Year C], a detail in Luke’s gospel caught my eye, one that I'd somehow missed in all my years of reading this familiar text. Describing the scene when…