My Family Prayer Book

  Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary time 1 Kings 17:10-16 At Zarephath (town between Tyre and Sidon), Elijah meets a Canaanite widow at perhaps her lowest level of material resources in the midst of a drought/famine. She is gathering firewood to prepare what would be the last meal that she and her son would eat before facing death by starvation. The drought/famine should be seen in the bigger context of the battle of Yahweh versus Baal to see who controls nature, and the widow could be seen as collateral damage in this war. We know that women and children are most acutely affected by disasters and war. According to the laws of hospitality to strangers, the widow brings Elijah water and Elijah imposes an insensitive and even selfish request for bread. And then Elijah ups the ante and asks for cake with a promise that Yahweh would ensure her larder never empties till the rains. In effect Yahweh is replacing her impending death sentence with redemption, if she chooses to believe in Yah...

  Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary time In Biblical stories, like in literature, underdog accounts with fortune reversals satisfy our thirst for poetic justice. In today's 4 liturgical passages: Isaiah 35 alongside Psalm 146, James 1 and Mark 7: all depict dramatic reversals that heal and sustain. Psalm 146, like Isaiah 35, imagines God executing justice for the oppressed, feeding the hungry, setting prisoners free, opening blind eyes, and lifting those bowed down. Mark 7 depicts Jesus healing a man who was mute, and allowing his own eyes to be opened by a distressed foreign woman. James 2 counsels favouring the lowly over the influential, and commends deeds over pious sentiments. Reading 1 Isaiah 35:4-25 Underlying the dramatic imagery of divine action, hope proceeds not simply from God’s expected (Hebrew naqam) 'restorative justice', but from those the prophet seeks to inspire, from a small band of exiled Judeans who return to a war-torn land and recultivate it. Who throug...