Tuesday, February 19, 2013

 

Deut. 26:1-11; Ps. 91:1-2, 9-16; Rom.10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

Romans 10:12 "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him."

 In the darkness fifteen feet below street level, under the 12th century church of San Clemente in Rome, an excavated 2nd century Roman domus (family home) sits with its brick barrel vaults, with small terracotta tiles in a herringbone pattern on its floor. A trickling spring sounds somewhere nearby. In this barrel-vaulted space met a 2nd or 3rd c. house church - the type of community to whom the apostle Paul would have been writing his Epistle to the Romans: small communities meeting in homes and reading the letters from Paul and others, passed from house to house to house. Copies passed from city to city. It was letters, primarily the letters, like that to the Romans, that sustained and enheartened the early house churches, and we have the witness of these letters still, in our hands, in our worship. 

O God of the desert, you have promised to be generous to all who call on your name: fill us with joyful confidence in your living Word for all people.   Amen

• Create a small Lenten group to study together in a home: to study perhaps one book of the Bible, a novel, a memoir …