By Deacon Timothy Siburg
Revised Common Lectionary Reflection for March 23, 2025
Key Verse: Incline your ear and come to me; listen so that you may live. -Isaiah 55:3
As we journey through the Lenten season, we are invited to do so with intention. This season invites us to take a deeper look. To spend a little more time in reflection and discernment. To ponder and wonder about what God has done, will do, and promises to do for us. Lent also might provide even more time to remember God’s word and work for us, and to respond with gratitude and hope for God’s abundant love.
For me, this Lenten season feels to have started a little late this year, but it’s all in God’s good timing. I don’t know about you, but with all that is swirling in the world around us, I think having an opportunity to slow down and listen to what matters might be the most life-giving gift we could give ourselves right now. At least in my world, 2025 has been a constant stream of reacting to things outside of my direct control. Perhaps as we continue our Lenten journeys, God might be inviting us to slow down and move from being reactive to proactive, functioning and responding with intention, grace, and gratitude as signs of God’s abundant love.
This week’s lessons remind us of the divine invitation to abundant life with God. Isaiah speaks for the Lord: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1). God invites one and all, and God provides for our needs abundantly. With God’s economy, there is no lie or sin of scarcity. With God’s abundance, there is no limit on opportunities, vocations, supplies and goods, or even and especially love.
More bluntly, Isaiah explains that God provides what is good (Isaiah 55:2). With this provision comes an invitation to listen more deeply and intently. Isaiah gives voice to God, “Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David” (Isaiah 55:3). God provides life and does so abundantly. But to really lean into this gift of life, we’re called and commanded to listen and to come. In explaining this, the prophet is recalling the purpose of the law. As one of my beloved seminary professors the Rev. Dr. Terence Fretheim was famous for repeating, “God gives the law, so that life might go well for you.” God wants life to go well for all of God’s beloved. And Isaiah suggests that God doesn’t just want life to go well, but to be good and abundant.
This desire and gift of abundance is an invitation. It’s an invitation to a relationship with God and neighbor, and also an invitation to respond. So, God invites us, as we repeat in liturgy throughout Lent, to “return to the Lord” (Isaiah 55:7). We do this, because we know that God is God, and we are not (Isaiah 55:8-9). We do this because we know that God provides abundantly far more than we could ever hope for or imagine ourselves. We do this, because we know that God is patient and will hope beyond hope that God’s beloved will “bear fruit,” as Jesus describes in a parable about a fig tree (Luke 13:6-9). We do this because we know that as our Lenten journey continues, we move closer and closer to the events that surround the cross. So, we receive this invitation as both gift and promise. One we are given freely, but one we are also then invited to respond to and respond with.
Questions for Reflection:
- How might you respond to God’s invitation to abundant life today?
- How might you invite others to respond?
- What stories come to mind as you think about the ways you have seen God’s people respond to God’s gracious and loving abundance? What stories or experiences have you witnessed of God’s gracious love and abundance being made real in daily life?
In Worship and Congregational Life
Within the Lenten journey’s invitation to be intentional lies an opportunity to return to the roots of our faith. This is a season where, perhaps, instead of complicating faith and theology, we might simplify them to get to the core of the story that God entrusts to us. Perhaps in this way, it might be an easy connection within the flow of worship or in one’s message to think briefly about the Lenten Gospel Acclamation. One of the more common texts for the gospel acclamation this season closely resembles the words from Isaiah 55: “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and abounding in steadfast love.”[1] There’s nothing new or earthshattering in this, but such an acclamation reminds of stewardship. We return to God and respond for all that God promises and provides, which are central acts of stewardship. Making that connection might make for a timely reminder.
With youth and children
If there was ever a week to have either a noisy offering or a processional offering, this might be it. With Isaiah’s words about abundance and the call to “return to the Lord,” something that calls forth movement within worship might be symbolic but also help make these words real and tangible in a different way. Consider inviting the youth or youth adults to lead this. Invite them to model the act of coming forward in the worship space as a sign of returning. What might they bring before God? Their gifts? Their full selves? Their questions, hopes, and dreams? If anyone might be willing to give words or voice to this, perhaps that becomes a moving part of a children’s message and could easily help the preacher make the connection between the words from Isaiah and the practical and pragmatic of what stewardship in action and in daily life might look like. Particularly as it impacts each child of God as a steward and disciple, where we remember that all that we have and all that we are, are God’s. And we have the opportunity to return to God that which is God’s, and to respond.
[1] The acclamation such as one found in Setting Three of Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2006), p. 142.
Previous reflections for Lent 3C:
2019 – We can all benefit from God’s ‘holy composting’
2016 – Where are the figs?
2013 – Hold to hope, pursue patience, cling to Christ
Leave a Reply