Lectionary Notes: First Sunday in Lent, Year C

Welcome to the weekly Lectionary Notes from Liturgical Threads. Below, you will find my notes and thoughts on each verse from the Revised Common Lectionary for the above week. These notes combine theological analysis, historical context, and exegetical techniques to provide an analysis of each passage. These aren’t dry academic commentaries; these are my take on Scripture, bringing in study, prayer, and with an eye on the world around us. Since this is the first post of this project, I’ve made it available to everyone, so you can see what you are getting if you subscribe. Going forward, free members will receive one note; become a paid subscriber to see the notes for all four verses.

Lessons Appointed for the First Sunday in Lent, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Romans 10:8b-13

Luke 4:1-13

Find the full text of each verse by clicking here.

The Old Testament: Deuteronomy 26:1-11

The first Sunday in Lent this year falls in a season of great upheaval here in the United States. We’re mere weeks into a new presidential administration, one that seems likely to sink its claws deep into our attentional spaces, whether we want it to or not. This means, for me, that I cannot read this week’s Lectionary verses without the news pressing on my brain and demanding that I read Scripture though the lens of the world we are all experiencing right now.

That goes no less for this piece of law from the book of Deuteronomy. In this passage, we have instructions being given for the First Fruits Offering, something that is part of the Festival of Weeks that was laid out in Deuteronomy 16:9-12. Instructions are given for how those offerings should be presented, and the liturgy that is to be recited as part of the offering. Those words are interesting; they are a recitation of the history of Israel, tying this offering of the bounty of the harvest to the liberation the people experienced. An inset in the Storyteller’s Bible (CEB) notes that “This text concludes the long section 12:1-26:15 that presents the law as being responsive to the history of God’s care and deliverance.” I love that idea: a law, not that restricts and binds as its primary effect, but which is responsive to our history of God’s care of us, and deliverance from that which actually binds us.

There are two main points I want to draw out in this passage, one about priests, and one with relevance for reading this passage today, in 2025. First, priests. Notice that three times in these eleven verses the hearers are given explicit instructions for how to present the offering at the altar. In two instances – verses 2 and 10 – the hearer themselves is encouraged to lay the offering before the altar in the Temple. But then, in verse 4, they are instructed to allow the priest to present it. This may seem a small and inconsequential note, one which is basically smoothed out in some interpretations. But, I think there is an interesting interpretation of this change that is fruitful for theological reflection. Turning again to my CEB Storyteller’s Bible, the commentary asks, “Has a later edition, eager to highlight the indispensability of the priests, added this? Don’t pastors suffer from the congenital habit of striding between worshippers and God, saying ‘I’ll take care of this for you’?” It’s a fair question, and opens space for clergy pondering this verse in the lead up to Lent to ask some hard questions, of themselves and their congregants. Lent is the season of penance and reflection, the time when the church is asked to withdraw with Jesus into the desert, face the temptations of the world, and prepare for the overturning of all we know on Easter morning. Are you, dear pastors, doing that work alone for your congregation? Are you, beloved siblings in Christ, asking more of your pastors and priests than is healthy, for them and for you?

The second thing I want to think about here is the relevance of this instruction from God for how we relate to the strangers among us. The instructions God gives here for the offering don’t end with presentation of the first fruits and tithes. Verse 11 instructs us, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.” The celebration of the bounty God has provided is one that we are called to share, not just with our family or our tribe, but beyond that, and most notably, with the alien, the stranger, the immigrant in your land. The nation you build in this Promised Land, God says to Israel, is not a walled garden. You are a light to the world, and your bounty is the first fruits of the world’s nourishment. Share it far and wide.

We are in days when that kind of generosity and attitude of abundance is sorely lacking, especially towards the alien, the stranger, and the immigrant among us. Questions of documentation and scarcity dominate the way we as a people think about these questions. Reading God’s instructions in this passage are an opportunity to reflect on the attitude God commends to God’s people. If the Israel of the desert wanderings could show compassion and care to those who were strangers among them, surely we in this day and age of great wealth can as well?

The Psalm: 91:1-2, 9:16

“You are my refuge and my stronghold,

My God in whom I put my trust.”

Psalm 91:2 is perhaps one of the most well known and beloved verses in all of Scripture, a refrain carried through the ages by those whom has faced terror and oppression and uncertainty. The larger Psalm it is drawn from holds God up as a protector, one who goes out to face down our enemies and strikes them down.

This Psalm is included in the Lectionary for the first week of Lent for a very specific reason: verses 11 and 12 are the words the Tempter recites to Jesus when he is taken up on the pinnacle of the temple and told to throw himself down, so that angels might save him. The Tempter knows this Psalm of comfort and protection, and seeks to test that promise from God. (More on this below, in the Gospel passage for the week.)

Psalm 91 can be a text of great comfort in this time of great fear and uncertainty. One does not need a theology that involves a highly theistic conception of the Divine to find comfort in these words, reminding us that God’s promises include a hopeful vision of the future, no matter the challenges or dangers we are facing. Love wins, in the end.

The Epistle: Romans 10:8b-13

This section of Romans 10 is a perennially argued about passage in the battle over universal salvation. The words here seem pretty cut and dry: in order to be saved, you must make a confession of the Lordship of Jesus, with your mouth and your heart. Anyone can do it, but only those who do it can be saved. End of story.

Or so it would seem. This is also a big part of Romans for the arguments in favor of justification by faith alone. Works play not part, at least not according to Paul in this passage. Salvation is simply a profession of authentic faith “in” Jesus, whatever that means.

I want to sit with that for a moment, this idea of “believing in” Jesus, in order to unpack some of the narrowness of such a reading of Paul. What would Paul mean here, that we simply must “believe in” and declare aloud that we do? What is the functional action which occurs in a person? It can be a literal belief in the personhood of Jesus, akin to believing that Pikes Peak actually does exist, or walruses actually exist. It’s more than that, right? So, is it belief in Jesus’ lordship, since verse 13 implores us to “call on the name of the Lord.” But, again, what am I believing in? That Jesus is ruling over us? I just have to affirm that, and I’m in? This seems like a small thing, tied as it is to such a big thing as all of eternity. It falls a little flat, if all of Christianity can be boiled down to five verses midway through this letter. Especially when this is compared to the breadth of the rest of Romans, where the concepts of justification and sanctification are tied up in our participation in the life and death of Christ. Why would Paul build out this 16 chapter argument around reconceptualizing salvation towards a participatory action, when he could just offer up a business card-sized reminder that the hearers merely needed to believe, and they are in. And, where is Jesus’ life and death in all this? What was the point of his dying? To simply be an act that would later serve as a measuring stick for us to test our faith by?

My questions here are not prelude to a longer answer; I hope they just illustrate how silly it really is to try to boil this faith down to something as small as a confession of faith. These five verses in Romans are not the crux around which the faith rotates. So, what are they? How can read divine participation into this selection? I think this is a good time, for ourselves and our congregations, to be reminded that, almost more than anywhere else in the Bible, you cannot pull a handful of verses from Romans and build a theology around them? Romans is hard to understand because Romans is a singular argument, developing across the whole of the text. Romans 10:8b-13 cannot be exegeted outside of the context of the remainder of chapter 10, or the ground work laid in chapters 8 and 9, or the conclusions it draws to in chapter 11, 12, and 13.

Now, this isn’t to say I’m recommending you strike this Romans passage from consideration in worship this week. Far from it. I think there is something to be said for letting these snippets of Romans serve as reminders of the larger argument that Paul is making through the letter: namely, that through Jesus’ death, God has opened up a whole new creation, one not predicated upon us earning salvation, but in which salvation is imparted on us through Christ’s death and resurrection, no matter what. We simply have to accept that loving embrace of the Divine, and walk forward into our new lives and the demands of the freedom we now have. That is the story Romans is telling as a whole, and which you can discern in this five-verse snapshot.

The Gospel: Luke 4:1-13

The Temptation of Christ is the logical place to start for Lent. After all, we are spending the next forty days imitating Christ’s time in the desert; that is literally what the season of Lent represents, liturgically.

There are a lot of different ways on offer to think about the temptations Jesus faces in these verses. This year, I am feeling called back to a reading of them I haven’t visited in a while: Shane Claiborne’s take from Jesus for President, a section of the book he titles “Political Seduction in the Desert.” Shane presents the three temptations Jesus faces as embodying three bastions of worldly power: economic power (through the accumulation of enough stuff to stave off any scent of need); political power (through the gaining of power over the kingdoms of the world); and religious power (through the power of signs and miracles, the marshalling of the spiritual in service of the temporal.)

Jesus, of course, resists these temptations. But they prefigure the temptations facing Christians every day. Its easy to fall into these traps; the lie that we never have enough, but should accumulate more; the lie that we can bring the kingdom of God via the ballot box and political parties; and the lie that our call is merely to count souls and get people’s butts in the pews. Jesus, in his own rejection, reminds us of our duty to also reject the ways of the world.

Now, I get it; this is not easy for any Christian concerned with justice to hear. It certainly is a hard reminder for me. I like politics; I like getting into the weeds on policy and arguing with those I disagree with, and seeing my preferred candidates win. I’d love to see a world where everyone have an abundance of goods, so that need is never known again, and where everyone experiences the joy of the life of discipleship. But, Jesus reminds us, again and again; what we are about is not love, or material gain, or showy spectacles; what we are about is love, pure and simple. Do the hard work of loving – especially loving those who we would call our enemies – and suddenly, those temptations lose their teeth, because the world becomes something wholly different.