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John 13:31-35
Easter 5C
If your son was in a bad car accident and spent weeks in critical condition in the hospital’s ICU with machines keeping him alive, then upon his full recovery and on the day he comes home from the hospital, wouldn’t it feel a bit odd to not celebrate his homecoming in favor of a long…
John 10:22-30
Easter 4C
For the last 12 or so years, few names in the world have been more famous than that of Barack Obama. Not so long ago, however, that was not the case. Indeed, not so very long ago almost no one had ever heard of Obama. A scant four years before he managed to get nominated…
John 21:1-19
Easter 3C
In a recent interview with Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, Union Seminary President Serene Jones makes it plain that she does not believe Jesus physically rose again from the dead. She claimed this in part because “the gospels are all over the place” about the resurrection and she cited the fact that Mark…
John 20:19-31
Easter 2C
Sample Sermon: All Locked Up This week’s gospel commentary is a written sermon that I preached at Calvin CRC: https://cepreaching.org/written-sermons/all-locked-up/
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 he…
John 12:1-8
Lent 5C
In Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of the characters keeps saying over and over to the character of Big Daddy that you can just smell “the mendacity in the air.” This was a play with many layers of deception and lying and it became so very nearly palpable to some…
John 2:1-11
Epiphany 2C
Apparently we are going to have to revise our definition of “glory.” Sometimes things happen in life that make us update long-held notions and definitions. It reminds me of the scene from the movie A Beautiful Mind in which the socially inept genius mathematician John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) haltingly proposes to his…
John 18:33-37
Proper 29B
Digging into the Text: It’s interesting that this year Christ the King Sunday comes just a few weeks after a very divisive American election. Actually, as of this writing, it’s not even over yet, as recounts continue in closely fought races. On top of that, the Gospel for this year is a tense conversation between…
John 6:56-59
Proper 16B
But how does it all end? After plunking us down in John 6 for the whole of August in Year B, the Lectionary puts on the brakes before we can get to the end of the story where the REACTION of the crowds to all of this is recorded. So I would suggest to my…
John 6:51-58
Proper 15B
In her short story “The River,” Flannery O’Connor depicts a child who actually drowns when trying to baptize himself in a river. After this startling story was published, someone asked O’Connor about this grotesque depiction of baptism. O’Connor’s critics thought this story was too extreme. But her goal was to remind her readers of how…
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