Home » New Testament »
Romans 6:12-23
Proper 8A
“The wages of sin is death.” So proclaims any number of homespun billboards I have driven past over the years. Not a few church signs have sported this just-less-than good news, too. It’s the kind of thing non-Christians expect to hear from finger-wagging preachers or other pious purveyors of the Gospel. It’s what vaguely crazed…
Matthew 10:24-39
Proper 7A
John Donne was a seventeenth century author, poet, and preacher. In his poems and sermons Donne penned a bevy of striking lines. “Death, be not proud . . . Death, thou shalt die!” “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Strikingly…
Romans 6:1b-11
Proper 7A
Be who you are. That is Paul’s most basic message in Romans 6. Paul tells us who we are and so reminds us how we are to live from now on as a result of our true identity. Romans 6 is a landmark passage. Scholars can write (and have written) whole books on any one…
Matthew 9:35-10:8
Proper 6A
Be careful what you pray for—you might just get it! You can see a little of the dynamic of this bit of proverbial wisdom in the pivot from Matthew 9 to Matthew 10. At the end of Matthew 9, Jesus tells the disciples to pray that more workers would be sent out into the ripe…
Romans 5:1-8
Proper 6A
By now many of us have heard about the recent flap regarding the well-known contemporary hymn “In Christ Alone.” Seems a certain hymnal committee wanted to formalize what a number of congregations had already done informally on their own and that is swap out language about how on the cross “the wrath of God was…
Matthew 28:16-20
Trinity Sunday A
Worship and Doubt. Apparently they have been together from the beginning. As Rev. Leonard Vander Zee pointed out one time in a sermon, the Bible is eminently realistic about such things. Matthew did not sugarcoat this for us, did not try to place shining halos behind each disciple’s head as they all stood on this…
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Trinity Sunday A
“I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you . . . Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.” Those are among the closing words of the landmark “Letter from a Birmingham…
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…
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost A
Just before he ascended to the heavenly realm Jesus promised his disciples they’d his “witnesses … to the ends of the earth.” Yet nothing any of them had done or said up to that point had even hinted that they were up to that task. In fact, the gospels consistently portray Jesus’ disciples as a…
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
Pentecost A
When you see a gift in action, it can be a wonder to behold. Think of the gift of administration, for instance. When I think of this, several people come to mind, including someone I once knew who I will call Ellen. Ellen worked for an organization that often required her at any given moment…
Content related to New Testament