Author: Pastor Kate Costa

• Numbers 21:4-9  • 
• Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22  • 
• Ephesians 2:1-10  • 
• John 3:14-21

The fourth of the Old Testament promises providing a baptismal lens this Lent is the promise God makes to Moses: those who look on the bronze serpent will live. In today’s gospel Jesus says he will be lifted up on the cross like the serpent, so that those who look to him in faith will live. When we receive the sign of the cross in baptism, that cross becomes the sign we can look to in faith, for healing, for restored relationship to God, for hope when we are dying.

From Sundays and Seasons.com. Copyright 2012 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.

• Exodus 20:1-17  •
• Psalm 19  •
• 1 Corinthians 1:18-25  •
• John 2:13-22

The third covenant in this year’s Lenten readings is the central one of Israel’s history: the gift of the law to those God freed from slavery. The ten commandments are one of the chief parts of Luther’s catechism, a core piece of baptismal instruction. They begin with the statement that because God alone has freed us from the powers that oppressed us, we are to let nothing else claim first place in our lives. When Jesus throws the merchants out of the temple, he is defending the worship of God alone and rejecting the ways commerce and profit-making can become our gods.

From Sundays and Seasons.com. Copyright 2012 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.