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John 14:15-21
Easter 6A
We are in the Easter season and we’ve spent the better part of it remembering all of the different ways that Jesus spoke of the Easter power to come even while he was still here with his disciples. We pick up this week right where we left off last week. Jesus called himself the way,…
Acts 17:22-31
Easter 6A
Trouble in the Text The Apostle Paul had just taken the express train out of Berea. The Christians there showed him wonderful hospitality but the religious zealots from nearby Thessaloniki came into town to rough him up. So his peeps bundled him off to Athens, where Scripture tells us, he was waiting for Silas and…
1 Peter 2:2-10
Easter 5A
God uses God’s image-bearers’ race, gender, history and other things to shape who we are. Yet while those factors help form us, Jesus’ friends don’t find our central identity in them. We are first and foremost what Peter refers to in verse 10 as “the people of God [laos Theou*].” By professing that, the apostle…
Acts 7:55-60
Easter 5A
The Lectionary text is only 5 verses long but it is in the context of one and a half chapters telling us the story of Stephen. Making connections to the five verses in the Lectionary, I will use my commentary to tell this larger story. Illustration Reformation scholar Kenneth Woo’s newly released book, Refugee Calvin,…
John 14:1-14
Easter 5A
As I spend more time journeying with Jesus, I’m coming to realize that Thomas’s question, “How can we know the way?” could be read in any number of ways. There’s the literal reading that sounds a bit like a prayer in the fog: “Lord, we don’t see the road that you’re telling us to take,…
John 10:1-10
Easter 4A
The lectionary calendar separates Jesus healing the man born blind (chapter 9) with Jesus’s “I am” proclamation here at the beginning of chapter 10 by a number of weeks—the first being in Lent and now here in Easter. A quick review of the man’s experience of being kicked out of the synagogue makes it pretty…
Acts 2:42-47
Easter 4A
Illustration A magazine profile of celebrity chef turned daytime television host, Rachael Ray, boasted this headline on their cover: “Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog.” It matters where you put the comma. Giving Rachel Ray the benefit of the doubt, one assumes she likes three things — cooking (COMMA) her…
1 Peter 2:19-25
Easter 4A
The faithful proclamation of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson poses some challenges. In terms of the church year, its focus on Jesus’ suffering seems to orient it more to a Lenten or Holy Week than Easter theme. Preachers may need the Spirit to help us be a bit creative to make 1 Peter 2:19-25 “fit” into…
Acts 2:14, 36-41
Easter 3A
Illustration I was, it may surprise some of you to learn, a theatre geek in high school. Of course I loved to be on stage performing for an audience (I know, right? Shocker.) But I also helped with costumes, did some stage managing and student directing. But my favorite part wasn’t the flush of pride,…
Luke 24:13-35
Easter 3A
One of the things that makes this story so lovely is that it subtly reminds us that the circle of disciples is much larger than we make a point to remember when we’re reading the gospels. “Now on that same day two of them were going…” These two on the road are from “the eleven…
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