The Riverside Gathering Posts

Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year A — Romans 4:13–25 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations” [Romans 4:18]. There is a temptation, when reading Romans 4, to make it a meditation on the heroism of Abraham’s faith — on what it looks like to believe hard enough, long enough, in the face of sufficient discouragement. At first blush, Paul seems to invite that reading. He lingers over the obstacles: the body that is as good as dead, the barren womb, the absurdity of descendants as numerous as the stars. And Abraham, we are told, did not weaken. He grew strong. He gave glory…

Trinity Sunday — Matthew 28:16–20 And when they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted [Matthew 28:17]. It is the ending of a Gospel, and Matthew will not let it be tidy. The eleven disciples have traveled to Galilee — to a mountain Jesus designated, though Matthew does not name it. They have made the journey in obedience to an instruction they received before they understood what it was for. And when they see him, the text says, they worshiped him. But some doubted. That sentence has unsettled readers for centuries, and rightly so. This is the climax of the Gospel — the risen Christ, the gathered disciples, the…

Pentecost Sunday — John 20:19–23 He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” [John 20:22]. It is the evening of the first day of the week, and the doors are locked. John tells us why: fear of the authorities. The crucifixion was not a private affair. It was a public execution, state-sponsored, designed to send a message. They knew how these things worked. If the Romans and the Temple leadership had disposed of Jesus so efficiently, the movement around him was not likely to be left undisturbed. So they locked the doors. But there is something else in that room alongside the fear of arrest. The…

Seventh Sunday of Easter — 1 Peter 4:12–14; 5:6–11, RCL, Year A Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you [1 Peter 4:12]. There is a New Testament letter that most of us read the way we might read someone else’s mail. We recognize the language. We affirm the theology. And we sense, if we are honest, that it was written for people living in circumstances rather different from our own. That letter is First Peter—the letter that has served as the Epistle reading throughout this year’s Easter season. It is addressed…

Sixth Sunday of Easter — 1 Peter 3:13–22 Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15b). We are well into the Easter season now, and during this wonderful time frame, the Epistle readings have been drawing us into the First Letter of Peter — a circular letter addressed to scattered Christian communities in Asia Minor, people living as what Peter calls “aliens and exiles” in a culture that regards them with suspicion, and occasionally with something sharper than that. Peter’s is a letter about how to live faithfully under pressure. About hope that…

Fifth Sunday of Easter — 1 Peter 2:2–10 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation [1 Peter 2:2]. For the past several weeks, the Epistle readings appointed for the Easter season have come from the same letter, 1 Peter — written to communities of Christian believers scattered across Asia Minor, men and women living as what Peter calls “aliens and exiles” in a world that does not share their allegiances. The letter opens in a register of sustained doxology: living hope, imperishable inheritance, a faith more precious than gold. It is elevated language, and it is meant to be…

Fourth Sunday of Easter — 1 Peter 2:19–25 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly [1 Peter 2:19]. The passage the Lectionary gives us this week [the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A] begins at verse 19. But it begins in the middle of something. A few words earlier, Peter addresses household slaves directly — not their masters, not the heads of households who held power over them, but the slaves themselves. That is already unusual. Ancient household codes, the genre Peter is working within here, were typically addressed to the paterfamilias, the male head of the household, who…

Third Sunday of Easter — 1 Peter 1:17–23 He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake (1 Peter 1:20). There is a phrase near the opening of this week’s Epistle passage [1 Peter 1:17-23, Third Sunday of Easter, RCL, Year A] that has a way of stopping the reader cold — if the reader is paying attention. Peter tells his audience to invoke God as Father—a familiar enough practice. But in the same breath, Peter reminds them that this Father judges all people impartially, according to their deeds. With this in mind, Peter says, live your lives…

Second Sunday of Easter — 1 Peter 1:3–9 Although you have not seen him, you love him [1 Peter 1:8]. The letter we call First Peter is addressed to Christians scattered across five Roman provinces in what is now western Turkey — people living, as the letter puts it, as “exiles of the diaspora.” They are not exiles in the geographic sense; most have probably never lived anywhere else. But they are strangers in their own culture, resident aliens in a world that does not share their loyalties or hopes. I spent two weeks recently in that part of the world. It is beautiful, layered with history, and still marked…

John 19:25 — One of the women who stood near the cross at the crucifixion of Jesus, named once in Scripture, otherwise unknown. No one will remember her name. She knows this, standing here in the thin shadow of the cross, unable to look away— not from courage, but because love has taken that option from her. She cannot climb to Him. She cannot stop this. So she does the only thing left: she walks with Him in her mind through what His eyes may still be seeing. She hopes He remembers the river— John standing waist-deep in the current, water streaming from his great dark beard, the sky opening…