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Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Proper 10A
This week we transition to parables, Jesus’s stories that bend and challenge our understanding with essential truths shared through images that spark our imaginations. The parable of the sower and the seed is a teaching about how—or even if—we come to understand these things of God and his Kingdom. We begin with the sower, or…
Romans 8:1-11
Proper 10A
Few things offend 21st century western sensibilities more than what our culture perceives of as closed minds. The mirror image of that is the high value that many of our contemporaries at least claim to attach to open minds. Perhaps especially North Americans and Europeans claim to abhor closemindedness and celebrate open-mindedness. It is, of…
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Proper 9A
What will Jesus call our generation? Do we run the same risk of refusing to join Jesus? Of rejecting the ways of God and God’s agents (like John the Baptist)? Does the Triune God look upon us and sigh, frustrated that we keep refusing to truly see and welcome wisdom, kindness, grace, and compassion for…
Romans 7:15-25a
Proper 9A
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Paul simply can’t understand what he does. He repeatedly asserts that he knows what’s right and holy. Yet the apostle also just as persistently insists that he doesn’t do what he knows is right and holy. Throughout approximately the first quarter of his letter to the Romans, Paul talks a lot…
Matthew 10:40-42
Proper 8A
This is the end of a very long section on what the disciples will experience as Jesus sends them out to the harvest of need (Matthew 9.35-10.8 from a few weeks ago). It seems odd to me that Jesus is saying this to the disciples. I mean, rather than the disciples, isn’t this the message…
Romans 6:12-23
Proper 8A
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s preachers might begin their message by saying something like, “Claims of mastery over any human being is despicable – except in one case.” That won’t just, after all, grab our hearers’ attention. Claiming that one form of slavery is beneficial is, in fact, also at the heart of Romans 6:12-23. While…
Matthew 10:24-39
Proper 7A
We’re in the same narrative moment as last week’s lectionary passage, meaning we are still considering the nature of our calling to go out as disciple-apostles who proclaim the good news of God through doing Kingdom good. You’ll note that last week had the option of including the verses where Jesus describes the hardship that…
Romans 6:1b-11
Proper 7A
“The baptized Christian has, in an important sense, already died. The baptized Christian has already made her ‘final exit’ and has come through on the other side.” Fleming Rutledge makes that perhaps startling profession in her lovely sermon, “The Final Exit of the Baptized” (Not Ashamed of the Gospel, Eerdmans, 2007). The Spirit could use…
Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23)
Proper 6A
Packed into this passage is a description of not only the calling we have as Jesus’s disciples to be people who proclaim the good news through our actions, it also gives us a real-time picture of how Jesus feels for us. We don’t have nearly as many live-action emotive moments from the Christ in the…
Romans 5:1-8
Proper 6A
In the space of just two verses (2b, 3a) Paul twice says that Christians “rejoice” (kauchometha). Few Christians are likely surprised by the first cause of our rejoicing that the apostle identifies in this text. Many of Jesus’ friends, however, may be startled by our rejoicing’s second cause. So those who proclaim not just this…
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