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Good Friday: Explaining (Without Explaining Away)
They should have seen it coming. That’s what a number of people said about the U.S. Intelligence community following the horror of September 11. The CIA, the FBI, our spies in other countries: no one saw the attack coming, but not a few critics think they should have. When something big happens, we want explanations,…
Palm Sunday: A Flash in the Dark
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is like a flashbulb going off in a dark room. Most of us know what that’s like. You are sitting in the middle of a very dark room when suddenly, maybe as a prank, somebody pushes the test button on a camera’s flash. Just before the flash, the room is so…
Lent 4: Everything I Have
He had a point, you know. The older brother: he had a point. And if you don’t believe that, then maybe it will help to admit that it’s a point you and I have made in the past and it’s a point we are liable to make again in the future, too. I’m not saying…
Lent 2: Christ the Hen
When I was a kid in the early 1970s, Saturday night meant watching my favorite TV show, Emergency! I loved that show about two brave paramedics from Squad 51 of the Los Angeles Fire Department. When Johnny and Roy were in danger, my pulse raced. Thanks to my father, who was a real-life volunteer fireman…
John 2:1-11
Epiphany 2C
This text is an example of how we can miss important revelation from God if we get too caught up in, for lack of a better term, the humanness of the Gospel narratives. Or, more precisely, maybe it’s more that our cultural baggage and experiences that get us stuck when we read these texts. I…
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Epiphany 2C
An old cliché suggests that the more things change, the more they stay the same. However, Christians might like to think that the Church is immune to such inertia. After all, among the Reformers’ most cherished claims about the Church is that she is “always reforming.” Yet a comparison of Paul’s first letter to Corinth’s…
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Epiphany 1C
The Sunday text near Epiphany is the Sunday we commemorate the Baptism of the Lord. And yet, in the gospel of Luke, we pretty much miss the whole thing! Luke describes it in the past tense: Jesus was one of “all” the people who were baptized by the John the Baptist. Instead, Luke’s baptism account…
Acts 8:14-17
Epiphany 1C
Familiarity may, as the old cliche goes, breed contempt. But sometimes it also breeds a kind of blindness. I’ve written a sermon commentary on Acts 8:14-17. I’ve preached on it multiple times. My familiarity with it hasn’t yet dimmed my fascination with one of the Scriptures’ most mysterious and intriguing stories. However, my relative familiarity…
Ephesians 1:3-14
2nd Sunday after Christmast C
Few Scripture passages are theologically weightier than this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. In fact, in an earlier commentary on it, Scott Hoezee remembers once asking the congregation he served about how it would feel if he were from then to on base every sermon on Ephesians 1:3-14. He notes that while most would call it a…
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
2nd Sunday after Christmast C
There is overwhelming emphasis in this passage on how things “from above” are received here on earth. In the advent season, we remembered that we are actively waiting to receive the gift of the Word in full, and that God is actively at work to bring about his Kingdom on earth. In John’s prologue, it’s…
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