Reading Plan for July 5 - 11

July 5, 2026 | Luke 1:57-66
Reflection:
We learn about the miraculous things that happen around John’s birth. It is said that folks in the region talked a lot about these things. Did they remember them twenty-something years later when John began to preach in the wilderness? Who were the first ones to ever hear John preach? Were they relatives or neighbors? Did they say to themselves, “I’d always wondered how God was going to work through him!” That’s all speculative. What we do learn from the passage is that John is a part of the miraculous thing God is doing in the world. Something to note: the word we use as “miracle,” in the Bible, is dynamis, which means “power.” So, we could have started today’s reflection with “We learn about the powerful things that God is doing around the birth of John.” What powerful acts of God are you grateful for this day?

July 6, 2026 | Luke 1:67-80
Reflection:
Zechariah’s song of prophecy is full of imagery and language from the Old Testament: redemption, savior, ‘house of David,’ ‘the mouth of the prophets,’ remembrance, Abraham, covenant, rescue, holiness, righteousness, knowledge, mercy, and peace. If we had given AI the prompt, “Create a hymn like a psalm that covers the major themes of the Old Testament,” AI might come up with something like this. When we hear this hymn at the beginning of Luke’s gospel, we are set within the context of the Hebrew scriptures. The foundation has been laid to say, “The God we know through scripture is about to fulfill all that was promised in those scriptures. Wait and see!” We are to hear that God is the one “preparing the way” up and through the time that John begins his ministry and points to Jesus as he does so.

July 7, 2026 | Luke 2:1-12
Reflection:
Yesterday, we heard about how the whole of the Old Testament is summed up in Zechariah's prophetic song. Today, we hear how not just the Jewish world is implicated in the events around Jesus’ birth, but so is the whole of the Roman Empire. Caesar Augustus probably thought of himself as a major actor in the world. But his story is subsumed in the story that God is up to something in the world. The census becomes a vehicle by which God achieves something that would seem obscure on the Empire’s map and in the Emperor’s mind. A tiny, insignificant town in the middle of nowhere becomes the center stage for God’s unfolding redemption (setting all things right). Notice how recent biblical scholarship has shifted our understanding that ‘there was no place in the guest,’ instead of ‘there was no room in the inn.’ Still, he was born in a place that is shared by housed animals. Not the birthplace of a king, certainly. How did Mary remember the angel’s prophecy at this point? Notice how the angels break into prophetic song to announce the birth of this humble one in a humble place. Already, we hear that this babe is to be called the ‘Messiah.’ The angel knows what emperors and kings do not.

July 8, 2026 | Luke 2:13-24
Reflection:
When the angels sing, “Peace on earth to those whom God favors.” The word in Greek here is eudokia, which can mean: to show pleasure, favor, desire, delight, or satisfaction; to think well of.”This is another instance of God's love and mercy shining forth. We heard this with Mary (God’s favor be to you, most favored one!) and that ‘God looked with favor on his people.” Peace comes on earth because God wills it, not because anyone’s earned it. Take note of the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth and what happens next. The key moment, to show that everything that’s happening is in accordance with scripture and prophecy, is that Mary’s child is called Jesus. There’s a lot in a name. Jesus or Yeshua basically means “God is savior, emancipator, redeemer, rescuer, liberator, and one who makes whole.” Just as we spoke of Zechariah’s song encompassing the major themes of the Old Testament, so too, in very short form, Jesus’ name reflects the fullness of who God is, embodied in the body and person of Jesus. Did you hear anything else in our passage today?

July 9, 2026 | Luke 2:25-40
Reflection:
Today’s passage brings us to the end of the infancy narratives of Jesus, and the conclusion of these stories comes with prophecies both fulfilled and set to be fulfilled. Imagine how, for both Simeon and Anna, the patient years of waiting were spent with devotion and discipline. These two bear witness to what God has promised of old to do, what God is doing in the present, and what God will do. And all this promising is centered in this infant Jesus, whose name’s meaning holds all these promises as well: God is salvation, deliverance, liberation, emancipation, rescue, and wholeness. The longing for which Simeon and Anna have longed comes to crucial fruition in Jesus. Imagine a mighty river that has been dammed up. The waters build up and rise behind the dam, with just one outlet to feed the valley below. Jesus is the “narrow gate” through which the mighty promises of God build up and flow through, highly concentrated, creating power as they flow through. What do you think Simeon’s words mean when he says that “a sword will pierce your soul,” in talking to Mary? Sometimes Mary is depicted with seven swords piercing her heart (in Catholic and Orthodox icons). These represent the “Seven Sorrows” of Mary, traditionally named: The Prophecy of Simeon:

1) When Mary presented Jesus in the temple, Simeon prophesied that her Son would be the cause of many to fall and rise, and that a sword would pierce her own soul;
2) The Flight into Egypt: Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with the infant Jesus to escape King Herod's massacre of innocent children
3) The Loss of Jesus in the Temple: During a trip to Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus went missing. His parents searched for three days before finding him in the temple;
4) Mary Meets Jesus on the Way to Calvary: Mary encounters her Son carrying his cross along the Via Dolorosa;
5) The Crucifixion: Mary stands steadfastly at the foot of the cross while Jesus is crucified and dies;
6) Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross: Mary receives the lifeless body of her Son after he is removed from the cross;
7) Jesus is Laid in the Tomb: Mary and other followers assist in laying Jesus in the sepulcher.

Not all of these Seven Sorrows are exactly biblical, but they point to aspects of the Passion story that disciples of Christ remember, as if with a mother’s heart. Mary’s remembrance of these things encourages us all to contemplate God’s acts of redemption in the world to bring about an end to oppression.

July 10, 2026 | Luke 2:41-52
Reflection:
Today’s story is pretty well known. Read it with fresh eyes to see if something stands out. What I expected to read, when Jesus answers his parents was, “Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?” Instead, we have in modern translation: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” This is closer to the Greek text of Luke. It could also read, “It is necessary that I be in my father’s house.” I grew up hearing about Jesus’ being “about his father’s business,” which implies that he was sent into the world to do the work of God, and that he knew this from childhood. Not a bad reading. What does it mean, however, that Jesus’ self-understanding was that it was necessary that he be in God’s house, especially when he spent very little actual time in the Jerusalem temple during his lifetime. Jesus preaches, teaches, and heals out in the towns and fields and by the seas and lakes. Jesus treats the whole world as “his Father’s house.” Jesus sanctifies and hallows all of life. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “Do you not know that you (plural) are God’s temple and the Holy Spirit dwells among you?” What does it mean for you to live as God’s temple…where Jesus must be?

July 11, 2026 | Luke 3:1-14
Reflection:
When we step into the third chapter of Luke, we enter a story common to all the gospels: the preaching of John the baptizer, down by the Jordan River. What all the gospels agree on is that John’s work is a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies: God has established that there is to be a forerunner of the Anointed One. Preparation is the theme. And how is that preparation achieved? By preaching on the kingdom: John went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This is the core of each gospel writer’s narration about John. Luke tells us more, giving us sample sermons of John, how he “turns” people toward righteousness, as a foretaste of Jesus’ preaching and ministry. John does not hold back from calling out hypocrisy. Many were convicted by his preaching. What do you think John would preach today? What message, as a foretaste to hearing the gospel as Jesus proclaimed it, do you think our world most needs to hear, so that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God?”