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Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

9th Sunday after Pentecost

Year B
July 21, 2024
Melinda Quivik

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Jeremiah 23:1–6
Psalm 23
Ephesians 2:11–22

Here is an image of what our world faces today and increasingly so in the future: Human beings with enormous needs for adequate care, clean air and water, nourishing food, and generally healing of all kinds. The crowd clambers for Jesus just as if they were migrants fleeing violence and autocratic power mongers who make their lives miserable. We witness increasing numbers of climate refugees whose land no longer sustains them. We may ask ourselves what it is in Jesus that heals the situation. Could it be that his great openness to reality is the answer to our relationship with Earth?

            Jeremiah speaks God’s “Woe!” to the shepherds who do harm to God’s people. The remedy is God’s gift of shepherds who will truly protect and defend the flock. God will raise up righteousness to bring safety. We can surely look to those who stand for finding ways to live responsibly on Earth as voices sent by God.

            The promise in Ephesians of being gathered by Jesus’ blood is a significant image through which to overcome the current polarization we experience around every difficult issue in the society and in the church. Because Jesus gathers everyone, we stand together in a vision of living in God’s dwelling place. Ephesians is a heady epistle of abstractions, but there is nothing distant and vague about reconciliation and breaking down walls. When together we face the reality of Earth’s needs, divisions can crumble into answers to real problems. It is the Good Shepherd who breaks through walls and gives us the spirit to see each other as partners on the journey of healing.

 

HYMN:  “Shepherd Me, O God”   ELW #780

 

Melinda Quivik
Melinda Quivik
Twin Cities, Minnesota

Melinda Quivik, an ELCA pastor (who served churches in Montana, Michigan, and Minnesota) and former professor of worship and preaching, is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal Liturgy, a writer, and a preaching mentor with Backstory Preaching at backstory-preaching.mn.com. Her most recent book, Worship at a Crossroads: Racism and Segregated Sundays, is a response to Lenny Duncan's Dear Church. She calls all churches to learn why worship ways differ in our various traditions as we seek to be more welcoming.

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