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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…
John 10:11-18
Easter 4B
Today we don’t have shepherds much in the wider society. Today we have managers. But shepherds and managers are not the same. Whenever Jesus uses the pastoral image of a shepherd for himself, the point is nearly always the same: as the good shepherd of his sheep, he will risk his life and even temporarily…
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
John 3:16 may be the most famous Bible verse in the world but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to understand. As Frederick Dale Bruner points out in his commentary on The Gospel of John, this entire chapter is fraught with mystery. The story takes place at night, the meeting seems to be done somewhat in…
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
Sample Sermon: “The Child’s Leading” Don’t you wish sometimes you could have been there, could have seen them in person? I mean the disciples and, of course, Jesus himself. You hear people say things like that once in a while. Wouldn’t it have been something to have been able to meet Peter, to shake Matthew’s…
John 1:6-8, 19-28
Advent 3B
“Among you stands one you do not know.” Those were John the Baptist’s words as recorded in John 1:26. Of course, at that time it was literally true that a quiet carpenter’s son from the backwaters of the Roman Empire was rubbing shoulders with lots of people—including the crowds that jostled together at the banks…
John 20:19-23
Pentecost A
My friend the Bible teacher/commentator Dale Bruner is a wonderful teacher of biblical stories. Part of Dale’s teachings usually include some dramatic re-enactments of the story at hand. He always elicits a chuckle from the class at this point in John 20 when he reaches a certain part in the story’s re-telling only to reach…
John 17:1-11
Easter 7A
Every once in a while someone discovers a recording that until then no one knew existed. Maybe it’s John F. Kennedy on the phone with Nikita Khrushchev or some other famous person having a conversation with yet another high profile person. Once the recording comes out, it’s fascinating because now we get to eavesdrop on…
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