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Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A, October 9, 2005

First reading, Isaiah 25:6-10a

Our Liturgical Setting: This year, we've been reading from Saint Matthew's gospel. Its original audience were mostly Jewish Christians dealing with three hard issues: Lately our readings from Matthew have dealt with the second issue, trying to explain how God was so generous to late-comers, and how the originally chosen ones made themselves unworthy. Today's gospel makes that point with a parable about a feast to which the invited refuse to come.

Now all that just explains why the editors of the Lectionary want us to hear today's passage from Isaiah. It, too, is about a banquet.

The Theological Background: But Isaiah wasn't just saying this to set us up to hear a particular gospel paragraph. He expresses a grand prophetic vision here. Notice the universal scope of what he predicts: a feast for all people, doing away with death for all people, wiping away tears from every face, removing the reproach from the whole earth. It took a courageous prophet to speak of a God whose care extended beyond a single people, when that single people prided itself on its elect status. That, more than its reference to a banquet, makes this an important passage.

Proclaiming It: Of course, emphasize the words that tell the scope of God's care: all, every, whole.

Second Reading, Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20

The Historical Situation: Paul had received generous financial support from the Christians at Philippi, on several occasions; these sentences come from his "thank you" note to them.

Proclaiming It: In proclaiming this aloud, be sure you accentuate the contrasts between the various levels of comfort and need that Paul recalls.

Unless the preachers in your congregation have been concentrating on the recent series of readings from Philippians, the typical listener might let this go in one ear and out the other. But there's a one-liner within these verses that, if you accent it enough, might be just what someone needs to hear this Sunday. It's this:

I can do all things in him [Christ] who strengthens me.

Try not to let this gem get lost.

Several other commentaries on these passages. All are thoughtful, all quite readable, from the scholarly to the popular.
Links may be incomplete more than a few weeks before the "due date."
Lutheran pastor and college teacher Dan Nelson's notes for a study group. Dan explains the texts verse-by-verse, and sometimes word-by-word, with cross-references to other Bible passages. Especially useful if you're puzzled about the meaning of a word or phrase in the readings.
Today Dan covers the same first reading and gospel that we do, and a slightly different passage from Philippians. 		Father Roger Karban's 1999 syndicated column about these readings,

and his 2002 column

The 2002 column of Jesuit Father Francis X. Cleary, From the site of the Saint Louis Review.
The Text This Week; links to Lectionaries of many churches, homilies, art works, movies touching scriptural themes, and other resources on the week's scripture Saint Louis University's excellent new liturgy site
Most welcome here are Reginald Fuller's commentaries.
This site posts its pages only a week before the given Sunday, and keeps its back issues posted for only about eight weeks.

The Lectionary selections in the frame at the left, if any, are there for your convenience. The publishers of the page in that frame have no connection, except for membership in the one Body of Christ, with the publisher of this page. Likewise the publishers of the pages on the links above.

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Last modified: Sat Sep 24 19:47:37 CDT 2005