As our North American culture no longer keeps the Sabbath, it seems most Lutherans have lost “Sabbath-keeping” as well. It is a sign of our increasingly secular culture, as secularism continues to squeeze religion and religious observance out of home, family and society. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines secularism as “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.” Pope Benedict XVI spoke often of “aggressive secularism,” pointing to the fact that secularism is not benign, but aggressively at work to contain or remove “religion and religious consideration.”

Today, we hear of the call of Levi/Matthew and Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees and scribes as they challenge His understanding of the laws and commandments of Judaism.

There may be readers now wishing we would stick with the New Testament readings and not spend so much time in 2 Chronicles. The danger is that we will only read in the New, dismissing the Old as boring, ancient history, irrelevant to what happens in the Gospels and Epistles. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In our dealing with congregations which may be in conflict, experiencing tension or are simply “stuck” and stagnant, the first question we ask is, “What is your current reality?” It’s not helpful to ignore or dismiss the reality of one’s situation. The second question is, “What do you believe is God’s intended future for you?” Does God intend you to decline and finally close your congregation?

Today, we hear of King Solomon, preparing to build the Temple in Jerusalem. What a magnificent place it would be. Solomon needed all kinds of building materials and laborers to complete the work, which would stand on the mountain — in Jerusalem. To this day, we marvel when we see depictions of Solomon’s Temple, where he built a house for the Lord God. Of course, Solomon would also build himself a palace.

The daily reading plan now moves from Micah to 2 Chronicles, beginning just after the death of King David in 1 Chronicles 29:26-30. The first act recorded, then, is Solomon’s gathering of all Israel, all commanders, judges, rulers and heads of houses. King Solomon gathered them at the “high place” that was at Gibeon, where the Tent of Meeting was, the ark of God and the bronze altar. And Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings upon it. His first act was to gather the Lord God’s people for worship and to make an acceptable gift to the Lord.

The Gospel reading for the First Sunday in Lent is always one of the Gospel accounts of the temptation of Jesus. Our Sunday lectionary readings are in Matthew this year, and you would have heard Matthew’s account in worship on March 1. Our daily readings bring us to the account in Luke, and in the season of Lent, you can’t hear this too often.

Well, today I have chosen as our devotional reading the passage from Luke, which is probably skimmed over by most readers. It is one of two genealogies in the Gospels, one here in Luke, the other in Matthew. I have heard preachers dismiss the genealogies as unimportant, and in some ways, that’s true. In other ways, the two genealogies serve a very particular purpose, in accordance with the intention of the author.