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1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
Epiphany 5A
My Uncle Rich was one of the wisest people I’ve ever known. I don’t remember his IQ as being exceptionally high. Neither what Paul calls “this age” nor its rulers (6) would consider him to be particularly wise. He didn’t have a lot of formal education. So most people would claim that my Uncle Rich…
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Epiphany 4A
A number of years ago The Christian Century invited theologians, pastors and other Christian leaders to attempt to succinctly summarize the gospel. It asked them to proclaim its good news in just seven words, and then expand on their summary in a few sentences. The November 29, 2011 edition of the Century published some of…
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Epiphany 3A
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson brings to mind the novelist William Faulkner’s lament about the post-Civil War American South: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” It also in some ways resonates with the historian and philosopher George Santayana’s “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” If Christians didn’t know…
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Epiphany 2A
Gospel proclaimers who think of preaching as largely the sharing of helpful hints for being a better Christian may find that this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson offers rather thin subject material. It is, after all, far longer on theology than on ethics. Many English translations of 1 Corinthians 1:1-9’s Greek have six sentences. People, however, are…
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Easter Sunday
Comments, Observations, and Questions Death stinks – both literally and figuratively. While such a reminder may not seem like a particularly popular (or common) way to begin an Easter proclamation, it is the context within which we begin any and every proclamation of Easter’s great news. Even after Jesus rose from the dead, death still…
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Lent 3C
Comments, Observations, and Questions Gospel proclaimers who don’t have a strong working knowledge of the Scriptures’ original languages benefit from access to a good Greek and Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible. After all, English translations of the Scriptures sometimes obscure important points that the Holy Spirit makes through their original languages. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson provides (at…
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Epiphany 7C
One of the central questions some Christians have about the resurrection is, “Will we recognize each other’s resurrected persons in the new creation?” It echoes this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’ verse 35 where Paul quotes some people as asking, “With what kind of body will [the dead] come [to life]?” Both questions suggest that Christians sometimes…
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Epiphany 6C
Paul calls Jesus’ resurrection “of first importance.” Yet does it really matter whether Jesus rose, in John Updike’s lyrical words, “as His body” (Seven Stanzas at Easter), or as Gerd Ludemann insisted in a 2012 debate, the Scripture’s accounts of it were just a “legend, not objective description”? Does it really make any difference whether…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Epiphany 5C
I am a child of the North American 60’s who grew up watching some Saturday morning cartoons. So I can hardly hear 1 Corinthians 15:10a without hearing Popeye’s, “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam. I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.” That might seem like a rather strange onramp to a consideration…
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Epiphany 4C
1 Corinthians 13 is among the loveliest and most lyrical chapters in all of the Scriptures. It virtually sings in praise of love. Its truths are also, through the work of the Spirit, timeless. All of that and more, however, makes it easy to forget that Paul grounds this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson in the first…
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