Rama Ramanathan

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Luke 13:31-35. The English Standard Version supplies the heading “Lament over Jerusalem.” The speaking characters are Jesus and some Pharisees. Verse 31 begins with “At that very hour.” Luke begins with these words because he wants us to connect what follows with what Jesus said earlier. What […]

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to read Luke 9:28-36. The English Standard Version, and most other translations, supply the passage with the heading “The Transfiguration.” The Transfiguration is at once simple and perplexing. There are parallel accounts in Matthew and Mark.[1] What Luke tells us before he introduces the passage is important. Jesus had

Last Sunday, the lectionary invited us to ponder Luke 6:17-38. This is the middle portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, the beginning of which I discussed last week. The English Standard Version supplies today’s verses with the headings “Love Your Enemies,” and “Judging Others.” Some teachings are repeated often. For example, in church membership

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder John 2:1-11. The English Standard Version extends the cluster to include verse 12 and supplies it with the heading “The Wedding at Cana.” The title is descriptive, not theological. But, as I’ve said in several earlier columns, John is a theologian.[1] He wrote his gospel to teach

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Luke 3:15-17, 21-22. The English Standard Version doesn’t group these verses as two short clusters like the lectionary does. It groups verses 1-22 together and supplies them with the heading “John the Baptist Prepares the Way.” The story is about John whose birth God announced through an

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder John 1:1-18. The English Standard Version supplies the passage with the heading “The Word Became Flesh.” In the passage, John tells us what he’s going to tell us in the rest of his gospel. He leads us to believe that he’s going to tell us something changed

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Luke 3:1-6. The English Standard Version supplies the heading “John the Baptist Prepares the Way” to verses 1-22. No versions treat verses 1-6 as a separate unit. But there is value in treating them separately, because here Luke names – and shames – the most powerful people

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Luke 21:25-36. The English Standard Version[1] divides the passage into three portions. It supplies them with the headings: “The Coming of the Son of Man,” The Lesson of the Fig Tree,” and “Watch Yourselves.” Why did Luke compile these accounts? Why did he place them at this

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder John 18:33-38. The English Standard Version supplies the passage with the heading “My Kingdom Is Not of This World.” The passage is a portion of John’s account of Jesus’ encounter with the Roman governor, Pilate. The encounter happened after Caiaphas, the high priest, pronounced the sentence of

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Mark 13:1-13. The English Standard Version presents the reading as two passages. It supplies the headings “Jesus Foretells Destruction of the Temple,” (verses 1-2) and “Signs of the Close of the Age” (verses 3-13). We must read the passages with an interpretive tool which Jesus supplied earlier.