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1 John 5:9-13
Easter 7B
1 John’s “love letter” approaches its “landing strip” with this Sunday’s RCL Epistolary Lesson. Yet it may initially seem as if this “flight” is veering off course. After all, in a letter that John packs with calls to love God and our neighbor, this text emphasizes testimony. Of course, 1 John 5:9-13 is related to…
1 John 5:1-6
Easter 6B
My colleague Judith Jones suggests that the community to which John writes his first letter was facing a crisis. Some former members of the community were denying Jesus was actually the Messiah, God’s flesh and blood, fully human, fully divine Son. So John’s letters’ readers seemed to struggle with whom they should believe, how they…
1 John 4:7-21
Easter 5B
Contrary to the Beatles’ sung claims, all we “need” isn’t “love.” But the full-orbed, whole person love to which this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson summons Jesus’ followers will go a very long way to meeting all sorts of “needs.” Jesus’ friends might call John’s first letter his “love letter.” That emphasis is, in fact, a theme…
1 John 3:16-24
Easter 4B
“Love” is a word everyone knows and everyone understands. Or so we think. But if that is so, why is it that when we are called to preach on “love,” it can feel so daunting? Maybe it’s because we use the same word for so many things. It would not be unusual, for instance, to…
1 John 3:1-7
Easter 3B
It keeps coming up like a bad burp. So much of 1 John is lyric. Few passages talk better about the meaning of love than ones you can find in John’s first epistle. The opening verses of this third chapter likewise are simply gorgeous, waxing eloquent on the love lavished on us by God our…
1 John 1:1-2:2
Easter 2B
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s proclaimers might lead into their presentation of it with a story of how they needed an intercessor. A number of years ago I traveled to sit with members of our church during their family member’s major surgery. Using an inaccurate map, I became lost in a maze of one-way streets. After…
1 John 5:9-13
Easter 7B
One of my kids once had an assignment for a high school religion class: they had to find at least one Bible passage in the New Testament that matched each one of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. There are probably multiple options for each of the commandments but most students—including my child—quickly settled on…
1 John 5:1-6
Easter 6B
A friend of mine who teaches preaching says that whether we can see it with our physical eyes or not, a whole lot of people come to church each week spiritually bent over at the waist. They come with so many burdens on their shoulders. They are weighed down by them. What burdens? A spouse…
1 John 4:7-21
Easter 5B
If you preached on the Lectionary selection from 1 John 3 last week—and if you read the sermon commentary for that text that I posted here on the CEP website—then you will know a hard truth as we face this text: we probably both shot our wad on “love” last Sunday! So much of this…
1 John 3:16-24
Easter 4B
“Love” is a word everyone knows and everyone understands. Or so we think. But if that is so, why is it that when we are called to preach on “love,” it can feel so daunting? Maybe it’s because we use the same word for so many things. It would not be unusual, for instance, to…
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