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Easter: While It Was Still Dark
[…] that that service of shadows ends in darkness and silence. Liturgically that service is the deepest shade of purple that culminated the purple season of Lent. This Easter morning, however, you came to church anticipating the color white. You anticipated not darkness but brightness. You anticipated hearing from our brass instrumentalists. A few years […]
Easter: Enough
[…] recall from The DaVinci Code, Mary Magdalene occupies a central place in the narrative. Yes, the same Mary who figures in so importantly in the John 20 Easter story. But for Mr. Brown, Mary Magdalene was the target of a millennia-long cover up by the church to prevent the world from discovering that Jesus […]
John 20:1-18
Easter Day C
A friend of mine who is a true believer in the Gospel once confessed to me that Easter services can be a little hard on him. There’s just something about all that exuberance, all that blaring brass, all those bright lights and white lilies that combine to go sufficiently over the top in ways […]
John 20:1-18
Easter Day C
A friend of mine who is a true believer in the Gospel once confessed to me that Easter services can be a little hard on him. There’s just something about all that exuberance, all that blaring brass, all those bright lights and white lilies that combine to go sufficiently over the top in ways […]
John 20:1-18
Easter Day A
[…] on preaching in these days of COVID-19 isolation and fear, I suggested that despite the sadness we are all feeling at not being able to gather for Easter services in 2020, we don’t want to preach downer sermons. We don’t want our own disappointment at not being able to preach to an extra-full church […]
Easter: Soar We Now
[…] forever. It would have to hit something or get sucked in by a planet’s gravity or else it will just keep zooming along at 45 MPH. The Easter events we remember today took place nearly seventeen centuries before Isaac Newton did his work and formulated his laws of motion. But the gospels show us […]
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Easter Day C
One of the most difficult sermons of the year to write is the one to be delivered on Easter morning. The homiletical challenge we preachers face is obvious: the resurrection of Jesus is like the sky above: it really covers everything in the Christian faith. As a result there is a sense in which […]
John 21:1-19
Easter 3C
[…] and round the Gospel of Mark off a little better. Luke gives us a memorable post-resurrection story on the Road to Emmaus that happened yet that first Easter day but then rather swiftly fast-forwards to an exceedingly brief account of the ascension 40 days later. Matthew gives us just a handful of verses but […]
Matthew 28:1-10
Easter Day A
We are accustomed to associating Easter Sunday with travel. What we are perhaps not accustomed to realize is that the Easter story involves travel, too. Today we don’t mind traveling in order to see loved ones, including on holidays like Christmas or Easter. Some of us routinely pack up our cars and hit the […]
Luke 24:36-48
Easter 3B
The end of Luke’s Gospel sums it all up pretty well. In swift strokes of Luke’s quill, we move from Easter Sunday evening directly to the Ascension of Jesus (just beyond the bounds of this lection). We learn from Luke’s other New Testament contribution, Acts, that Jesus lingered in physical form for a good […]
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