• Genesis 6: 9-22, 7: 2-4, 8: 14-19

A ‘flood story’ was common to many ancient religions and cultures.  It was always a story to signify a new beginning, re-birth, second chance; in the Hebrew scriptures, a “new covenant.”  Usually, the rescue is accomplished through one faithful person.  In this case, Noah.

• Psalm 46

The psalmist asserts that God “looms” upon the earth even in natural disasters as well as human-made crises of war and peace.

OR

• Deuteronomy 31: 1-5, 19-24

Just prior to this excerpt, Moses has reviewed the many times the Jews had been unfaithful with God and concludes with this sentiment: “You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you.”  Now Moses poses a stark choice: obedience/blessing or disobedience/curse.

• Psalm 31: 1-5, 19-24

Using stock phrases from other psalms, this psalm expresses an urgent plea for God’s ear amidst the ugly gossip and slander whispered by his enemies.

• Romans 1: 16-17, 3: 22b-28, (29-31)

Paul grapples with a red-hot issue for Jews and non-Jews among the followers of Jesus in the early church: the role of the Law.  He argues what he calls “the law of faith,” which “upholds” “the old Law,” but supersedes it, too.  The “law of faith” is an acceptance of a “gift” from God to any and all who will receive it.  The “gift” is “the redemption that is in Jesus.”

• Matthew 7: 21-29

Jesus presents a stark contrast between merely professing faith and living it.  He provides a vivid illustration.  Building the foundation of your home on ground that is easy to dig might be easier and faster than building on rock.  But, when the inevitable rain, wind and floods come, the structure that took more time and effort and is built upon the rock of “these words of mine” will still be standing.  Matthew, as well as Mark, notes that Jesus’ teaching did not need the credibility of citing and explicating past authorities, “as the scribes.” did.

Today’s readings raise the question: What are you staking your life on?  Paul Ricoeur made important contributions to our postmodern understanding of language and hermeneutics.  He occasionally applied these ideas in the realm of religious faith.  For example, in a collection of essays entitled Figuring the Sacred, he wrote about what he calls “the economy of the gift.”  He writes that this “gift” includes “the gift of creation, gift of Torah, gift of pardon, gift of hope.”  Pardon and hope are made uniquely clear, he continues, in Jesus Christ, who always is the “how much more of God.”  He cites Paul’s understanding, especially in his letter to the Romans, of Christ as God’s “gift,” (today’s appointed excerpt is a choice example of what Ricoeur is writing about).   From an awareness of “gift” flows “the logic of superabundance,” which is the “opposite pole to the logic of equivalence in everyday morality.”  If and when one accepts that she is the beneficiary of these manifestations of “superabundant” “gift,” then she is now inclined to, what Ricoeur calls, “incarnational attestation.”  Which is not an intellectual certitude, but a certitude upon which we are willing to stake our lives (the rock upon which we build the foundation of our lives) — this belief that we live by grace (“superabundance”) and we have the capacity through our words and deeds of everyday living become a source of grace to others.  Thereby, words of our faith and our actual works and actions of everyday living become the same.

In another work, The Conflict of Interpretations, Ricoeur writes: “the logic of surplus and excess is as much the folly of the Cross as it is the wisdom of the Resurrection.” (p. 410)