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Romans 4:13-25
Lent 2B
Comments and Observations Did the apostle Paul distort the teachings of Jesus? That’s the claim of some higher critics of the New Testament. Jesus taught a simple but stringent Jewish Gospel, while Paul complicated it with categories taken from Hellenistic thought that dramatically changed Jesus’ message. Paul, say the most radical critics, invented Christianity. A…
Mark 1:9-15
Lent 1B
Comments, Observations, and Questions: Lent begins in the wilderness. And it’s not a terribly safe place to be all things being equal. Some years ago after a seminar I was attending in Tucson, Arizona, wrapped up around the noon hour, my wife and I decided to check out a nearby National Park. We took a…
1 Peter 3:18-22
Lent 1B
Comments, Observations, and Questions As I move through the lectionary year again and again, I often think that someone needs to revise the Revised Common Lectionary because it can be so repetitive. Take this text as case in point. Just 10 months ago, this was the text for the Fifth Sunday of the Easter season. …
Mark 9:2-9
Epiphany 6B
Comments and Observations: “This is my Son, whom I love. Look at him. Isn’t this display something! I mean, just get a load of this light show!” That’s what I’d expect God the Father to say. But he doesn’t. At the Super Bowl recently singer Katy Perry led the now typical halftime spectacular, pulling out…
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Epiphany 6B
Comments and Observations How fitting that the season of Epiphany ends with a celebration of Christ’s Transfiguration, that bright and shining moment near the end of his ministry when his true glory burst through the veil of his humility! And what a fitting text this reading from II Corinthians 4 is! It fits so perfectly…
Mark 1:29-39
Epiphany 5B
Comments and Observations: Usually we are far too casual about God’s kingdom. “Your kingdom come, your will be done” we say each time we intone the Lord’s Prayer, but when we finish our prayer and open our eyes, we do not see any such kingdom. It is difficult for us to conceive of a kingdom…
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Epiphany 5B
Comments and Observations On this fifth Sunday after Epiphany, this lesson from the epistles seems to have nothing to do with Epiphany, until we take a wider and deeper look. A review of the wider context reminds us that Paul is writing here to a church that is deeply divided—by the abuse of spiritual gifts,…
Mark 1:21-28
Epiphany 4B
It was the Sabbath and so, naturally, the Jews of Capernaum went to the synagogue. Some of them went sleepily, others went with a great weariness following a busy week of work. Still others trekked over in a rather irritable mood for who knows why–maybe it had been no more than that they were out…
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Epiphany 4B
“Now about food sacrificed to idols….” That is not a zinger opening sentence for a sermon addressed to 21st century North American congregations. Who in the world can relate to something like that? Well, in fact, people in some parts of the world can relate to that very easily, because they do still sacrifice food…
Mark 1:14-20
Epiphany 3B
Comments and Observations If Mark were a Broadway play, then the first 13 verses are like the overture. As we come to verse 14, the curtain is about to go up on the drama and when it does we see . . . Galilee. We’re not in a bigger city like Jerusalem or Sepphoris or…
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