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Matthew 22:15-22
Proper 24A
Sometimes these days Christians seem a little, well, thin-skinned. Some people can all-but fly into a rage and get into a serious spiritual lather when confronted with some obvious piece of anti-religious behavior or when they hear that a character on a TV show said something religiously offensive. On Facebook you can regularly see posts…
Matthew 22:1-14
Proper 23A
In a seminar on Matthew’s gospel, Tom Long pointed out that in Matthew, it’s never a good thing to be addressed as “friend.” Every time someone is called a friend in Matthew, what follows is not pleasant! Jesus himself was referred to as a “friend” by the religious authorities in Matthew 11 but it was…
Matthew 21:33-46
Proper 22A
******BOOM******* That’s probably not a word (or a sound effect) you associate with the parables of Jesus. But it’s more apt than you might think. Eugene Peterson famously said that parables are narrative time bombs. These are stealthy stories that steal into people’s hearts, confusing them initially, throwing them off balance for a while….
Matthew 21:23-32
Proper 21A
A while back I heard an old Jewish witticism in which someone asks his rabbi, “Why do rabbis always answer a question with another question?” to which the rabbi replied, “Why shouldn’t a rabbi answer a question with another question?” So also in Matthew 21: Jesus side-steps the question of the Pharisees as to the…
Matthew 20:1-16
Proper 20A
Sometimes the good sermon is the one that gets under people’s skins and bothers them. Sometimes we preachers even want this, which is why it can be disappointing in its own way some weeks to have people at the church door say “I really enjoyed that sermon, pastor!” You want to reply “I was hoping…
Matthew 18:21-35
Proper 19A
Matthew 18 reminds us of a core Christian conviction: Forgiveness is something we live, something we embody, every moment. But that only stands to reason. After all, the very foundation on which our identity as Christians is built is nothing less than the death and resurrection of Jesus and the flood of gracious forgiveness which…
Matthew 18:15-20
Proper 18A
In some segments of the Christian church, “Matthew 18” has become rather like “Miranda Rights.” As anyone who has ever watched police dramas on TV know, when arresting a suspect for any reason, the arresting officer is supposed to “read him his rights,” which is a set series of statements that most of us have…
Matthew 16:21-28
Proper 17A
“In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.” That is a hymn lyric that many Christians know. But the notion of the cross towering over various temporal “wrecks” gained new poignancy when we saw on the news—and for those of us who went to Lower Manhattan in the months after…
Matthew 16:13-20
Proper 16A
Matthew 16:13a is not important, right? We can just skip to verse 13b, yes? We can just start with the question “Who do people say that I am?” That’s the core if it all here, right? Wrong! We cannot skip the geographical marker in this incident. If we do, we miss the key piece of…
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
Proper 15A
Years ago F.F. Bruce published a book titled The Hard Sayings of Jesus. That title prompted a friend of mine to comment, “Hard sayings? I didn’t know there were any easy ones!” But, of course, it is true that some of what Jesus had to say was easier to puzzle out than some other things. …
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