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John 6:35, 41-51

Proper 14B

“Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert yet they died.” That’s what Jesus said and it’s a pretty easy verse to cruise past and not much ponder.  I mean, of course those people died—in fact, they had died about 1,000 years ago!!  And since no one even a millennium earlier had ever said manna…

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John 6:24-35

Proper 13B

(Note: Since the Lectionary is having us pastors camp out in John 6 for five whole weeks, this week I offer something a bit different than the usual sermon commentary: A sample sermon titled “Never Go Hungry” derived from the middle of John 6.  I hope it sparks ideas for my fellow preachers!) In the…

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John 6:1-21

Proper 12B

Hang on to your hats, preaching partners, because we are beginning a 5-week odyssey in John 6.  Granted this is an important chapter but 5 whole weeks of preaching sermons on variations of Jesus’ being the bread of life can be a bit taxing.  Having skipped over the Feeding of the 5,000 in last week’s…

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John 3:1-17

Trinity Sunday B

I wonder what Nicodemus was thinking about when he walked home that night. My guess is that it wasn’t the Doctrine of the Trinity!  Yet this is the Year B passage assigned for Trinity Sunday.  So what did he ponder?  No clue.  John doesn’t tell us.  That’s ironic seeing as, according to John’s reportage at…

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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…

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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…

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John 15:9-17

Easter 6B

Every week the sermon proclaims the Gospel.  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 also in service of getting at the big-T Text that just is…

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Symposium 2018: Three Not So Simple Questions

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Symposium 2018: Jesus Appears to Thomas

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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 say good-bye, never…

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