Home » New Testament »
Luke 18:9-14
Proper 25C
“I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves ME!” “How vast the benefits divine which WE in Christ possess!” “Blessed assurance, Jesus is MINE!” We sing such sentiments in church all the time. So before we get all squinty-eyed in regarding the Pharisee in Luke 18 as the quintessential spiritual…
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Proper 25C
There are lots of passages like this in the Bible even as we sing such sentiments in any number of songs and hymns. I am referring to texts that seem to have an utter confidence that God always comes through in the clutch. In this part of 2 Timothy 4 it’s the verse where Paul…
Luke 18:1-8
Proper 24C
Most of us know the opening to the various iterations of the “Law & Order” TV series that has been running for years and now in reruns. We hear a two-note musical beat, the screen fades from black to reveal . . . a dead body on the floor, someone’s discovering a corpse in a…
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Proper 24C
It is almost certainly one of the last bits of Pauline writing we have in the New Testament. That’s true whether you think this really was penned by Paul himself at his life’s end or is the last bit of pseudepigraphical Paul. Either way, this is it. And what a grab bag of treasures and…
Luke 17:11-19
Proper 23C
As a college German major, I’ve known for a while of a curiosity in that language. In German if you thank someone by saying “Danke,” the person whom you are thanking is likely to respond with “Bitte,” which is the German equivalent of “You’re welcome.” Except that “bitte” is also the word for “please” and…
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Proper 23C
By the time the Pastoral Epistles were written, there had been enough development in the Early Church that Paul was able to quote back to Timothy and Titus various “faithful sayings” that had gained currency among believers. These appear to have been pithy gospel summaries of key points. Since anything a person knew back then…
Luke 17:5-10
Proper 22C
You get the feeling that even the people who put together various Bible translations don’t know what in the world to make of—or therefore what in the world to do with—the first part of Luke 17. The NRSV chose as its sub-heading “Some Sayings of Jesus.” The NIV opted for something that looks like the…
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Proper 22C
It is all at once so clear and yet so paradoxical. The opening verses of Paul’s second letter to Timothy are at once soaring in their reveling in God’s power and grace and yet brutally honest in talking about the suffering the gospel sometimes brings to its best heralds. Paul can see it so clearly:…
Luke 16:19-31
Proper 21C
The author Robert Farrar Capon was a master of parabolic embellishment, being highly adept at bringing these ancient stories up-to-date through vivid contemporary language and imagery. Sometimes Capon also did what those of us who preach occasionally do as well: he’d name the characters. And so in the Parable of the Prodigal Son maybe we’ll…
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Proper 21C
Perhaps the single most striking feature of these closing verses of 1 Timothy is the glorious doxology that fairly erupts from Paul right in the middle of his advice related to riches and money and such. It’s as though Paul’s spirit had suddenly soared into the throne room of Almighty God himself and what Paul…
Content related to New Testament