Lectionary Readings for August 18th

Ten Spoon Vineyard & Winery - Missoula

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
AUGUST 18, 2013

(Read each verse by clicking on the link)

ISAIAH 5:1-7. Israel and Judah, the northern and southern kingdoms resulting from the breakup of the united kingdom of David and Solomon, were being threatened by advancing Assyrian armies circa 722 BC. Isaiah saw this threat as God's judgment for the injustice and apostasy of God's people. This lyrical poem described them as a vineyard that failed to produce good fruit and so had to be destroyed.

PSALM 80:1-2, 8-19. This prayer pleads for God to save Israel from destruction as a shepherd protects his sheep. Then Israel is likened to a vine that had been brought from Egypt, prospered in a new land, but now was about to be destroyed.

HEBREWS 11:29-12:2. This passage recalls more of Israel's religious heroes and describes how they suffered because of their faith. Then it gives the reason for this recital of their heroic endurance. We too may join them in following the example of the greatest of all, Jesus, who suffered death on the cross and now reigns with God.

LUKE 12:49-56. This apocalyptic vision of conflict about what Jesus means presents us with a picture of what may have actually happened in the community for which Luke was writing his gospel in the last decades of the 1st century. Confronted by Jews who had expelled all Christians from their synagogues and threatened with persecution by the Romans, it would have been natural for them to seek a deeper understanding of what was happening to them in the Jewish traditions about the end of time and the teachings of Jesus himself. No one can tell how much of these words were actually spoken by Jesus or created by Luke for his audience.