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Acts 16:9-15
Easter 6C
Occasionally the Lectionary’s choice of where to begin and end a text boggles preachers’ and teachers’ minds. This Sunday’s text is a good case in point. It’s not just that it begins in the middle of a paragraph in most English translations. It’s also that this text begins in the middle of what we often…
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
Easter 6C
On the very day when I slated for myself the task of writing up this sermon commentary article on the end of Revelation, I did some thinking about Ezekiel as part of an Old Testament Prophets course I am co-teaching this semester. As my colleague Amanda Benckhuysen pointed out, there is a lot of intertextuality…
John 13:31-35
Easter 5C
If your son was in a bad car accident and spent weeks in critical condition in the hospital’s ICU with machines keeping him alive, then upon his full recovery and on the day he comes home from the hospital, wouldn’t it feel a bit odd to not celebrate his homecoming in favor of a long…
Acts 11:1-18
Easter 5C
It’s hard for many of us to imagine Christians getting upset with each other over whom they eat lunch with. So we sometimes assume Peter’s Jewish Christian colleagues were angry with him because he shared the gospel with gentiles. You and I may assume this upset them because they thought of the gospel as belonging…
Revelation 21:1-6
Easter 5C
Among the best experiences I’ve ever had in life was snorkeling over coral reefs off the Caribbean island of Bonaire. My wife and I visited the island several times and each time continued to add to our “life list” of different types of fish and other sea creatures we had seen. Rainbow Parrotfish, Blue Tangs,…
John 10:22-30
Easter 4C
Now that he is finishing his two terms in office with about 9 months or so to go, it can be a bit startling to realize that a scant decade ago, not only was the name of Barack Obama relatively unknown, the man himself could walk around Chicago or anywhere else freely and without the…
Acts 9:36-43
Easter 4C
The text the Lectionary appoints for the fourth Sunday in Easter is a happy, hopeful one of healing in the face of chronic illness and life in the face of death. Yet it sticks out like a sore thumb in its Scriptural context. Its story of healing and raising to life just doesn’t seem to…
Revelation 7:9-17
Easter 4C
Depending on your church tradition, you may or may not be familiar with a glorious traditional hymn titled “By the Sea of Crystal.” I grew up singing the hymn quite often, including at a good many of the funerals I have attended. It is often sung near the end of funerals and has been known…
John 21:1-19
Easter 3C
Mark rings down the curtain on his Gospel before a single human being has as yet shared the news of the resurrection. That was sufficiently frustrating to some in church history that they tacked on a few more verses both to try to spice things up a bit and round the Gospel of Mark off…
Acts 9:1-6,(7-20)
Easter 3C
The Lord is willing to do almost whatever it takes to get people’s attention. So we save both God and ourselves a lot of time and energy if we just pay attention to the Lord right away. C.S. Lewis was among the most famous Christian authors of the twentieth century. He, however, initially paid virtually…
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