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John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
Pentecost B
Well before Jesus ever preached his first sermon, there was John the Baptist. Long before Jesus ever uttered a parable or healed a blind person, there was John. John had come to prepare the way for his cousin Jesus. And when John preached about this great and coming One, he talked a lot about the…
John 17:6-19
Easter 7B
“You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child.” That is a saying of my former colleague Ron Nydam. And he’s right. Worse yet, we all know that you cannot insure the happiness of your children, either. And that truth is married to another undeniable fact and that is this: the wider world in which we…
John 15:9-17
Easter 6B
Every week the sermon proclaims the Gospel. Or at least in some fashion it should. Every week. Every sermon. Yes, there is always a small-t preaching text (Psalm 23, John 15) on which the sermon is based. That’s the text projected onto the screen or printed in the church bulletin. But that text is always…
John 15:1-8
Easter 5B
When I was a pastor, I felt a sense of personal hurt whenever members transferred to other congregations, particularly when such transfers had nothing to do with a job relocation or a geographic move, as is sometimes the case. It was made worse by the fact that lots of such people never said good-bye, never…
John 10:11-18
Easter 4B
Those of you who are familiar with art may recall a funny habit that many Medieval painters practiced for quite a long time in Europe, and particularly in Germany. Artists such as Lukas Cranach and others painted many depictions of biblical scenes but they did so with the curious twist of dressing the biblical characters…
John 20:19-31
Easter 2B
Doubting Thomas. Don’t you hate it when you make one mistake and it defines you from then on out?! One little mistake and Thomas becomes a morality lesson, a byword, a counter-example of anything we’d ever want to be. In truth, however, there is more than a little of Thomas in all of us. When…
John 12:20-33
Lent 5B
“Sir, we would see Jesus.” With all due apologies to the many pastors out there who need to be addressed as “Ma’am” and not “Sir,” those of us who preach in various churches have seen those words—lifted up out of John 12:21—emblazoned on pulpits, often on a small brass plate visible to the preacher alone. …
John 3:14-21
Lent 4B
This commentary originally appeared as my regular blog post on the Reformed Journal on March 2, 2021. If you wish to see a slightly different take on this passage, you can click here to view my sermon commentary from 2018. Johnson&Johnson&Jesus If you have gone to most any news or newspaper website in the last…
John 2:13-22
Lent 3B
We are impressed very often by all the wrong things. In John 2 everyone was impressed with the physical Temple. It had been undergoing construction for over four decades already and was not even finished. It reminds me of the Ken Follett novel The Pillars of the Earth that narrates the construction of a European…
John 1:43-51
Epiphany 2B
Note: Rather than writing the usual notes on the text, I have attached a sample to show how on this occasion I assembled those same notes into a sermon. I pray it will spark even more creativity in you! The Child’s Leading
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