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John 18:33-37
Proper 29B
Comments and Observations: He doesn’t look like a king. More like a car accident victim. Or someone who went one too many rounds with Rocky Balboa in the boxing ring. Whether you call this last Sunday before Advent “Christ the King Sunday” or “Reign of Christ Sunday,” there is a kind of delicious irony to…
John 6:56-59
Proper 16B
Comments and Observations: 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…
John 6:51-58
Proper 15B
Comments and Observations: 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…
John 6:35, 41-51
Proper 14B
Comments and Observations: “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…
John 6:25-59
Proper 13B
Sample Sermon: Never Go Hungry; A sermon on John 6:25-59 In a sermon I once preached on the famous “I Am” sayings in John’s Gospel, I mentioned the Simon and Garfunkel song that had the line, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. What’s that you say, Mrs….
John 6:1-21
Proper 12B
Comments and Observations: 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…
John 3:1-17
Trinity Sunday B
Comments, Observations, and Questions 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 2015. So what did he ponder? No clue. John doesn’t tell us. That’s ironic seeing as,…
John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
Pentecost B
Comments and Observations: 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…
John 17:6-19
Easter 7B
Comments and Observations “You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child.” That is a saying of my former Pastoral Care colleague Ron Nydam. And he’s right. But the truth is that parents all know that as a matter of fact you cannot insure the happiness of your children. And that truth is married to another…
John 15:9-17
Easter 6B
Comments and Observations 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 but that text is always also in service of getting at the big-T Text that just is the Good News about Christ Jesus. The Gospel is why…
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