The BreadCast

(Job 42:1-3,5-6,12-16;   Ps.119:66,71,75,91,125,130,135;   Lk.10:17-24)   “I watched Satan fall from the sky like lightning.”   Oh how our readings conspire together today to bring heavenly light to our eyes.  Truly by them the Lord would say to us what He says to His apostles, what is so evident with Job: “Blest are the eyes that see what you see.”  For what more could we hope to behold than the...

(Job 38:1,12-21,40:3-5;   Ps.139:1-3,7-10,13-14,24;   Lk.10:13-16)   “I put my hand over my mouth.”   When the Lord speaks, what can we be but silent?  When He chastises us for our pride and sin, we can only be ashamed.  No defense have we before Him who holds us and all the world in His mighty hand and who comes to us with His redeeming love.  We can but bow before Him. The Lord has “commanded th...

(Job 19:21-27;   Ps.27:7-9,13-14;   Lk.10:1-12)   “I know that my Vindicator lives, and that He will at last stand forth upon the dust.”   “The hand of God has struck me!” Job exclaims as he begs pity from his friends who “hound [him] as though [they] were divine,” reminding him unendingly of the Lord’s justice and ever accusing him of having sinned against his Maker.  Job defends himself and wish...

(Job 9:1-12,14-16;   Ps.88:3,10-15;   Lk.9:57-62)  “Why, O Lord, do you reject me; why hide from me your face?” The cry of our psalmist certainly reflects that of Job, who in his travails asks, “How can a man be justified before God?” who realizes that the Lord “does great things past finding out” and that “should He come near [us], [we] see Him not.”  But it also reflects Jesus’ treatment of thos...

(Job 3:1-3,11-17,20-23;   Ps.88:2-8;   Lk.9:51-56)   “My soul is surfeited with troubles and my life draws near to the netherworld.”   After sitting in silence seven days, scraping the boils from his skin, finally, “Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.”  Finally he cries out against all his troubles, asking, “Why did I not perish at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?”  Only so much ca...

(Job 1:6-22;   Ps.17:1-3,6-7;   Lk.9:46-50)   “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall go back again.”   In the beginning and in the end, we have nothing: and so should be our attitude toward all things we are given – that they are not our own, that we do not possess them… that they shall pass from us unto eternity again.  As shall we all. In our first reading we begin to hear...

(Ec.11:9-12:8;   Ps.90:1,3-6,12-14,17;   Lk.9:43-45)   “The dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath returns to God who gave it.”   “As a watch of the night” is our life, passing unnoticed while souls slumber.  “You make an end of them in their sleep,” Psalm 90 prophesies (as we hear the same verses of this same psalm for the second time in three days); indeed man lies unaware...

(Ec.3:1-11;   Ps.144:1-4;   Lk.9:18-22)   “He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts.”   Yes, “there is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens”; and there is a time for time to cease and the timeless to come to the fore – a time for the things above the heavens.  And that fullness of time has come upon the ea...

(Ec.1:2-11;   Ps.90:1,3-6,12-14,17;   Lk.9:7-9)   “See, this is new!”   Here is He who is “new under the sun.”  For it is not so that “John has been raised from the dead,” nor that “one of the prophets of old has arisen”: He has not “already existed in the ages that preceded us.”  He is the Christ! He is the Messiah!  He it is who has come to “fill us at daybreak with [His] kindness, that we may s...

(Prv.30:5-9;   Ps.119:29,72,89,101,104-105,163;   Lk.9:1-6)   “Take nothing for the journey.”   How can he who takes nothing with him for his journey be provided for?  Does not such action contradict the wisdom of the king who asks in his book of Proverbs – “Give me neither poverty nor riches”?  Is it not poverty the Lord recommends to His disciples? The evangelical counsel of poverty practiced by...

(Prv.21:1-6,10-13;   Ps.119:1,27,30,34-35,44;   Lk.8:19-21)  “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act upon it.” Our readings today are filled throughout with one line pearls of wisdom culminating with Jesus’ above instruction in our brief gospel.  And though each individual proverb or paean to the command of the Lord seems a separate entity distinct from the others whi...

(Prv.3:27-34;   Ps.15:1-5;   Lk.8:16-18)   “The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked, but the dwelling of the just He blesses.”   Light fills the house of him “who walks blamelessly and does justice; who thinks the truth in his heart and slanders not with his tongue,” for he who does these things is as light itself, having no part with darkness.  He knows that “to the Lord the perverse...

(1Cor.15:12-20;   Ps.17:1,6-8,15;   Lk.8:1-3)   “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”   This is the heart of our faith.  This is the “Good News,” the Gospel preached in our midst.  This is our firm belief.  Upon it all our hopes stand.  Christ has been raised, and His disciples will follow Him.  As surely as we accompany Him here in His mission o...

(1Cor.15:1-11;   Ps.118:1-2,16-17,28;   Lk.7:36-50)   “I am the least of the apostles.”   Brothers and sisters, “little is forgiven the one whose love is small.”  And it is in the sweet tears of repentance that we discover the love held in the merciful heart of the Lord. Paul speaks the truth of himself when he claims that he does “not even deserve the name” of apostle because he has “persecuted t...

(1Cor.12:31-13:13;   Ps.33:2-5,12,22;   Lk.7:31-35)   “We piped you a tune but you did not dance; we sang you a dirge but you did not wail.”   “Like children squatting in the city squares and calling to their playmates,” seeking to have them comply with their own selfish will, so are “the men of today” according to our Lord.  And so is their song not “a noisy gong”?  Do they not lack of love?  Cou...

(1Cor.12:12-14,27-31;   Ps.100:1-5;   Lk.7:11-17)  “A great prophet has risen among us.” A great prophet, yes, and so much more; for here is He who is Himself the “one body” upon whom the “one Spirit” rests, and in whom all find their home. “The body is one and has many members; but all the members, many though they are, are one body; and so it is with Christ.”  Christ is all things: He is apostle...

(1Cor.11:17-26,33;   Ps.40:7-10,17,1Cor.11:26;   Lk.7:1-10)  “Just give the order and my servant will be cured.” By a word from His mouth what cannot be done?  For those who have faith this is all that is needed. Listen, brothers and sisters, to the centurion’s explication of “the meaning of an order”: “I say to one, ‘On your way,’ and off he goes; to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; to my slav...

(1Cor.9:16-19,22-27;   Ps.84:2-6,8,12;   Lk.6:39-42)  “Although I am not bound to anyone, I made myself the slave of all so as to win over as many as possible.” How like His Lord is Paul in his declaration, “To the weak I became a weak person with a view to winning the weak.”  For as Jesus descended from heaven to take on flesh and save those corrupted by its sin, so the Apostle has made himself “...

(1Cor.8:1-7,11-13;   Ps.139:1-3,13-14,23-24;   Lk.6:27-38)  “The measure you measure with will be measured back to you.” And what is your measuring stick, brother?  Is it the ruler of this earth, limited by eyes of flesh?  Or is it the yardstick of heaven, which reaches unto the Lord’s side and finds us in His sight?  Do you toil on this plane alone, or do you climb the mountain where He sits, whe...

(1Cor.7:25-31;   Ps.45:11-12,14-17;   Lk.6:20-26) “The world as we know it is passing away.” And so, “hear, O daughter, and see; turn your ear, forget your people and your father’s house,” for the King is calling you from this passing world to the heavenly marriage feast – “He is your Lord, and you must worship Him.”  This call is for every chosen soul, for who is the Lord’s virgin daughter, who i...

(1Cor.6:1-11;   Ps.149:1-6,9;   Lk.6:12-19)  “You have been washed, consecrated, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Yes, “power went out from Him which cured all.”  And as all were “healed of their diseases” and “those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured” by His touch, so we, too, are made whole in His sight; so we now become His holy childr...

(1Cor.5:1-8;   Ps.5:5-7,9,12;   Lk.6:6-11) “Let us celebrate the feast not with the old yeast, that of corruption and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” For indeed, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed”; indeed, the new Sabbath has come.  And on the Day of the Lord only goodness remains. “Get rid of the old yeast to make of yourselves fresh dough,” Paul commands...

(1Cor.4:9-15;   Ps.145:17-21;   Lk.6:1-5)  “God has put us apostles at the end of the line, like men doomed to die in the arena.” “Up to this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, poorly clad, roughly treated, wandering about homeless,” the great Apostle Paul tells us of the persecution and slander all the Lord’s apostles must undergo.  And yet “when we are insulted we respond with a blessing,” for...

(1Cor.4:1-5;   Ps.37:3-6,27-28,39-40;   Lk.5:33-39)  “The salvation of the just is from the Lord.” “For the Lord loves what is right, and forsakes not His faithful ones.”  And so He comes.  He comes bearing a new garment; He comes with the blood of a New Covenant, His own blood, to wash us clean and make us whole as He is.  Drinking this new wine indeed we are made holy. It is not as “John’s disci...

(1Cor.3:18-23;   Ps.24:1-6;   Lk.5:1-11)  “Amazement at the catch they had made seized him and all his shipmates.”  What a truly remarkable scene!  Here upon the call of the apostles, the first of apostles, Simon Peter, “fell at the knees of Jesus.”  Here in his barque, boats once desolate now suddenly fill to bursting with fish flopping about everywhere, unable to be contained…  This is a paintin...