22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 1, 2019

Preaching Texts: Acts 2:1-18; Matthew 28:17-20

Here We Are: Notes for Living On Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers
(Written for ages 3-7)

Comment: In Matthew 28, Jesus tells the disciples to go to all nations and make more disciples, and then in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit comes, enabling the disciples to speak to people from all kinds of nations, in all kinds of languages, from all over the world. The world is big, but Jesus Christ has authority over heaven and all of earth, and sends them the Holy Spirit to make it possible to carry out his mission to every person. In Here We Are: Notes For Living On Planet Earth, the narrator tells us that there are so many people on the earth, lots of different people, with different ways of dressing, living, and speaking. But the book also shows us that we are just one planet in the cosmos, and gives us that wider view of all the people, too. Jesus has given us the mission to go to all nations, to all of the many people here on planet earth, which is a daunting task. But he has also given us the Holy Spirit, to help us speak in new ways, to reach across divides, and connect to each other. Jesus has sent us to the whole big world, but he has authority over heaven and earth, and so helps us see the mission from his wider view. We are to carry out his work, in the power of the Holy Spirit, among the many different people on planet earth, to the ends of the earth.

This Sunday marks the end of Year 1 of the Narrative Lectionary Links. Next Sunday begins Year 2 of the four year cycle. We are grateful to Sara Anne Berger, Union Presbyterian Seminary alumna and pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Nachitoches, LA, for writing the Narrative Lectionary Links this past year.

Lectionary Links (NL): September 1, 2019 by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.