Competing claims about what is true inundated us in 2020. Both message and messenger were doubted. The sheer volume and velocity of information overwhelm. This new year will, doubtless, be the same. We pray things will be better, but we are realists, and knowing human hearts and human nature, words and motives are weaponized. Yet, again and again, God’s people seek a word from the Lord. Whenever and wherever God speaks, powerful things happen – sometimes seen, oftentimes, not; sometimes immediate, oftentimes, not. Nevertheless, when we dare utter, “The Lord says. . .” or in the old King James Version, “Thus saith the Lord. . .” we had better do so sparingly and humbly and we had better double-check and triple-check that, indeed, “Thus saith the Lord” and then pay careful attention to what exactly the Lord saith. And we would do well to urge and encourage all those who are with us to, likewise, pay attention to what the Lord saith. Many a person have claimed “Thus saith the Lord” and used that as a bludgeon to lord over others some nefarious intent or unwittingly (and wittingly) claimed “Thus saith the Lord” when the Lord neither saith nor was it thus so.

And that is why we dare to proclaim a word from God in the context of community, guided and tested by the Spirit, in conversation with the one holy catholic apostolic church, in dialogue with our confessions of faith, paying attention to what St. Augustine in his Regula Recepta referred to as the double love command: i.e., when an interpretation and proclamation of Scripture leads to loving God and loving neighbor, then we can assert as humbly and confidently as God’s grace allows, that “Thus saith the Lord.” The lectionary texts for January 2024 look to how and what the Lord says at various points in Scriptures and what the Lord might be saying to us as we begin a new year.

January 7 Genesis 1:1-5 Mark 1:4-11		January 14 1 Samuel 3:1-20 John 1:43-51
January 21 Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Mark 1:14-20		January 28 Deuteronomy 18:15-20 Mark 1:21-28