32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 27), Year C

Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage…
​~Haggai 2:3-4a
 
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore,.
~Luke 20:34-36a
 
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.
~Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
 
What we have here is a failure of imagination. The Israelites return from exile in Babylon to a city that is a shadow of its former self, and all they can see is destruction. They cannot imagine a future that is not only rebuilt, but a better version of itself, seeded by a memory of God’s provision and fidelity even in the worst of times, watered and fertilized with lessons learned and new commitments to self and neighbor. The Sadducees cannot imagine a future in which everyone has enough, in which all humans regardless of gender or race or background have access to the best of what the world has to offer, so they resort to methods of control and power, to “gotcha” questions that resist a better future.
 
The prophet, according to Brueggemann, does not contend against such resistance with use of force, but armed with much more powerful weapons: imagination and creativity. This too is a time for imagination, for the naming and living into a better future by way of faith in a God whose specialty is nothing less than this—a new thing. Do you not perceive it?
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Haggai 1:15b-2:9 † Psalm 98 † 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 † Luke 20:27-38
 
About the Art, 2007 photo of painting Resurrection Icon, Chora Church, Instanbul via Wickimedia. Retrieved on October 27, 2025 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chora_Church_Constantinople_2007_013.jpg.  

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