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Genesis 12:1-4a

Lent 2A

The Old Testament lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday reminds us that the God whom we worship in Jesus Christ is a God who calls.  Yet it also reminds us that God always calls for a purpose.  So we listen, not just for God’s call, but also for what purpose God calls us. At…

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Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Lent 1A

If you’re anything like me, you ask something like “What on earth is wrong with us?!” just about every time you read a newspaper, watch the news on television or peruse a news website.  There is something wrong, very wrong, with us.  We naturally prefer to blame someone or something rather than accept personal responsibility…

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Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Lent 2C

It’s fairly easy to trust God to keep God’s promises when things are going well. But when things don’t go well, even Jesus’ most faithful followers sometimes wonder how God will ever keep God’s promises. It’s at those difficult times that trust is a particularly precious gift. The Abram whom God told to leave his…

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Genesis 27

In his book Simply Christian, N.T. Wright says this about the Bible: “It’s a big book, full of big stories with big characters. They have big ideas (not least about themselves) and make big mistakes. It’s about God and greed and grace; about life, lust, laughter and loneliness. It’s about births, beginnings, and betrayal; about…

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Genesis 16:1-6

Comments, Observations, Questions to Consider Hagar is revered by 2 billion people walking the earth right now as a “mother of the faith.” Perhaps no other woman besides Mary herself has as many people who honor her. But what are we to make of Hagar’s story? The apostle Paul in Galatians 5 uses Hagar as…

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Genesis 4:1-14

This is a story about the other side of Eden, a story about life and death, a story about brothers, a story about God. An introduction to this text could highlight current stories of life and death – stories that make it clear that we are for life and against death.  When I preached on…

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Genesis 45

The Joseph narrative comes to a climax in Genesis 45.  In reflecting on Joseph’s story up to this point, one can see that Joseph was both a wounded man and a broken man.  He was wounded, certainly, by the loss of his mother, by the mistreatment of his brothers, by the mischaracterization by Potiphar’s wife,…

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Genesis 13:1-18

Have you ever returned to a special place from your past? The place you got engaged, for instance, your old dorm room, your first job. What about a place where you distinctly heard the voice of the Lord? Even sadder places seems to pull us back or make us speed up as we pass them:…

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Genesis 38

Genesis 38 has to be near the top of the list of least-preached texts in Scripture. There’s death (by the hand of God no less), sex—both in marriage and outside of it, and lots of things that parents might not be ready to have their kids understand (i.e. parents are too embarrassed to have to…

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Genesis 48:1-22

The scene: The whole crew is in Egypt: Jacob, their patriarch, his twelve sons and all their families, servants, possessions. Jacob is at the end of his life. As is the custom, all male heirs went to his deathbed to receive their blessing. Joseph, Jacob’s long lost son, the one he believed he would never…

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