Interfaith Lectionary Preview
This public post is a preview of the Interfaith Lectionary page on my website, available to paid subscribers.
This page of the website will provide a brief monthly Interfaith companion to the Revised Common Lectionary, with quotes, commentary, and themes which could be explored to connect with wisdom and neighbors of other faiths. It is presented in the ethos of "Love your neighbor" as well as the parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus teaches that the person who does religion differently than you has something to teach you about how to love your neighbor.
This page will host the lectionaries for the current or upcoming month. Previous months will be archived as posts on this website, and can be found by searching for the month and "Interfaith Lectionary".
For those unfamiliar with the Lectionary, lectionaries are cycles of readings from the Old and New Testaments which Christian churches use throughout each year on Sunday mornings in church (and on other holidays and observances as well). There are different lectionaries; a new popular alternative is the Narrative Lectionary. The most common, though, is the Revised Common Lectionary, used across Mainline Protestant churches, based on and very similar to the lectionary used in Roman Catholic Churches.
Vanderbilt University hosts a page where you can follow along each week:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/
May 2024
May 19, 2024
Acts 2:1-21 or Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; Romans 8:22-27 or Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
Themes:
Diversity within humanity, Inner revival
Quotes:
Qur’an 49:13
Translation from Quran.com: https://quran.com/en/al-hujurat/13
O humanity! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may get to know one another. Surely the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you. Allah is truly All-Knowing, All-Aware.
Rabbi David Lister
https://www.thejc.com/judaism/what-the-dry-bones-say-u0jj1ajf
“As much as we yearn to stride across the world stage and cure the ills of our fellow humans, so we must strive to improve ourselves, zealously righting wrongs and correcting inconsistencies in our own inner worlds…This precious spirit is hard to describe because of its very privacy. It does not need websites or brochures. It comes in forms that even the 21st-century has difficulty comprehending: the stillness that descends as the computer screen darkens and Shabbat candles glow; the tear that prickles an eye on Yom Kippur; a kitchen stocked with kosher food because even eating is one of the ways we show our love for God; a pair of tefillin that are dull with use, yet shine with holiness from all the prayers that have been said with them - these are some of the guises that the spirit takes as it moves within us.”
Commentary:
For a church which was evolving from a Jewish movement to a religion spreading through Asia Minor, the Greek and Roman world, and beyond, the story of Pentecost blended the reality of the Jewish diaspora with the universalizing spirit at the root of the Christian church. The spread of the gospel across different languages and cultures is both a blessing and a challenge - to see that Christ does indeed play in 10,000 places, as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, but not to become so sheltered into ethnic enclaves that we forget the freedom found in diversity. God made us many and at Pentecost gave the spirit to disciples so they could cross boundaries rather than build walls.
Muslims see the same blessing and challenge in their global Umma (community), where the roots of religion preach universality but becoming segregated into separate and at times conflictual cultures and sects undermines the sacred reality of unity. In the Qur’an, the holy scripture revealed to Prophet Muhammad, God shows the people their connectedness: “O humanity! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may get to know one another. Surely the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you. Allah is truly All-Knowing, All-Aware.” This verse is commonly cited in Interfaith dialogue by Muslims and also guides their internal community ethic.
Difference is divine. It is not false or to be overcome. It is fear of difference, our need to press all to sameness, which needs to be overcome. The Qur’an turns people toward each other, as Pentecost gives the spirit to people speaking good news to each other in different languages, not so they can achieve sameness but so they can reach unity in diversity.
As these scenes dramatically narrate an outer life, in community, Ezekiel 37 connects the outer life to the inner life. The story of the dry bones brought to life has both communal significance for the Jewish people Ezekiel speaks to, of return from exile, as well as an internal resurrection: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live”.
This is the angle Rabbi David Lister takes as he reflects on the role of this passage in Passover observance. Known as Pesach in Hebrew, Passover celebrates the liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The 8 day festival includes readings, and in the middle days, Ezekiel 37 is read. This connects the memory of their exile in Egypt and return to the exile of the Babylonian exile which Ezekiel experienced. Returning to their land was essential, but so too was the revival of their spirit by God.
Lister emphasizes that the outward work of restoration in the world, of making right what is wrong, is noble but needs to be lit by an inner fire of divinity. For him, it is the sacred life of Judaism, the distinctive practices to be preserved in the lives of the chosen people, which keep life coming to dry bones. Christians may feel a kinship to this instinct, knowing that as much hope we may have for a better world, as much as we work for the restoration of justice, peace, and the health of the earth, we need to be rooted in Christ, in worship and prayer, in Christ’s body, the church, where God causes breath to enter us, so we may live.