Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year B, RCL)

The preacher faces several challenges in these Ascension texts. How can we present Jesus’ departure from the earth as an occasion for not sorrow but celebration? How to translate the kingship and hierarchical language into imagery that speaks to a world no longer governed by kings and monarchs?

Feminist biblical scholars note a third challenge: How can we counter Luke-Acts' use of the Ascension to exert a degree of social control?

There must have been some Lutherans sitting in that conference room when the Revised Common Lectionary was birthed. That is the only explanation that I can come up with for Ephesians 2:1-10 having a role on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B.

Psalm 107 is a psalm of lament, a song sung by a disoriented soul watching the light drain out of the world and the shadows of death and pain pour in.

This week the lectionary offers foundational verses of our faith. But the faith cannot live on a couple verses alone.

Look, people are sinking under the waters. Here in this wilderness, people are perishing.

As much as we might like to make the faith about spiritual enlightenment or ethical ideals or the broad love of God that inspires tolerance, the fact of the matter is that the gospel is at root a rescue story.

The writer of Ephesians interprets what is happening to a person entering the Christian life.