THEOLOGICAL CLUE

If a congregation happened to be following the readings listed in Lutheran Worship, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod's revision of the Roman Ordo and the LBW lectionary, the people would have caught the eschatological clue last Sunday; the Lutheran Worship lectionary follows the older Lutheran practice of abandoning the numerical progression of the Sundays in Pentecost and assigning the same three sets of readings - always eschatological - for the last three Sundays of Pentecost. The LBW accomplishes almost the same thing by assigning eschatological readings to the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost and any Sundays following up to Christ the King Sunday in Cycle A; the LBW takes Matthew 25:1-13, and places it on this Sunday. This choice - in this year only - along w…