Authors /

Gail Ramshaw

Gail Ramshaw has written widely on liturgical language. Her book Treasures Old and New discusses images in the lectionary readings.

Sunday’s Coming

Children of the father?

Lutherans are trained to hear the scriptures as proclaiming either law or gospel. By "law" they mean not passages from the Old Testament but all of the Bible's bad news: the sins we commit, the misery we experience, the sorrows we inflict on one another, the death we anticipate, the distance from God that diminishes our lives. By "gospel" they mean not the final reading on Sunday morning but the good news of the mercy given by a loving God, wherever in the Bible it is proclaimed.
Sunday’s Coming

The Bible in (liturgical) context

One of the gifts of the lectionary is that a biblical text wears different vestments depending on when it shows up for Christian worship.
Sunday’s Coming

Going with Christ to God

Go to Google Images and look at some depictions of the ascension. This makes clear how difficult a festival this is for contemporary believers to celebrate.
In the Lectionary

May 15, Day of Pentecost: Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21

In Acts comes Luke’s imaginative way to build upon ancient stories. The tongues of fire are no longer seen from afar on top of God’s mountain. And the multiplicity of languages becomes God’s vehicle for bringing salvation to the entire world.
In the Lectionary

May 8, Easter 7C (Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26)

The reading from Revelation 22 concludes the book’s resurrection songs: the baptized enjoy the fruits of the tree of life.  But the tree is not merely one of the countless archetypal trees that religions and cultures everywhere have imagined.
feet of a statue of Jesus
In the Lectionary

Christ both there and here

On Ascension Day, with the readings from Luke and Acts in danger of being embalmed by archaism, the reading from Ephesians is a gift.
Feature

Yesterday’s language: The new words of the Catholic mass

The new English translation of the Roman Catholic Order of Mass, mandated by the Vatican to be inaugurated this Advent, wounds not only many of my Catholic friends but also me.
painting of people collecting manna
In the Lectionary

The manna story (John 6:24-35; Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Ephesians 4:1-16)

What is manna? Is it a Hebrew pun on mah hu, or as Everett Fox suggests, “Whaddayacallit”? Is it mountains of sweet insect excrement, as proposed by some scholars, or the stuff of legend?
a skeleton sits up in his grave
In the Lectionary

Ordinary 19B (John 6:35, 41-51; 1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2)

For decades, my students have failed to grasp the resurrection of the body as an article of faith.

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