Prophets and Profits

In Year C of the Sunday Lectionary - the book containing the three-year cycle of biblical selections for Sundays - the readings in Track 1* focus on the writings of the prophets. From the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost to the end of the liturgical year marked by the Feast of Christ the King in late November, the prophets Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Haggai are heard from in our first reading. We also hear from Lamentations, a collection of funeral dirges for Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple, besieged and destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE (BC) and its people taken into exile in Babylon. While Lamentations is not a prophetic book, it reflects an interpretation of the calamity it mourns as punishment for straying from faithfulness to YHWH and ignoring the prophets who drew attention to this breakdown of relationship. This entire cycle of first readings is focused on how humans endanger their relationship with God through injustice, based on greed for power, status, and wealth. The psalm response (or gradual in liturgical terms) is selected to harmonize with and reinforce the theme of these readings...

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