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1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Epiphany 4B
If last Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s call to “those who have wives [to] live as if they have none” seemed daunting to proclaim, this Sunday’s Lesson’s treatment of the issue of eating food sacrificed to idols may seem nearly overwhelming. It may, after all, feel as though Paul is speaking more to African or Asian churches…
Mark 1:14-20
Epiphany 3B
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 Rome. Nope, little…
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Epiphany 3B
Like most of this Commentary’s readers, I’ve attended a number of weddings. I’ve even officiated at a few. But I can’t remember ever hearing or preaching a wedding message based on this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. At one level that’s understandable. This short text, after all, doesn’t yield easy interpretations that would fit well into a…
John 1:43-51
Epiphany 2B
Sample Sermon: “The Child’s Leading” Don’t you wish sometimes you could have been there, could have seen them in person? I mean the disciples and, of course, Jesus himself. You hear people say things like that once in a while. Wouldn’t it have been something to have been able to meet Peter, to shake Matthew’s…
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Epiphany 2B
Christians sometimes assume people’s souls are the only places where God works. God’s people, however, who add Christian freedom to that assumption sometimes end up with unbiblical notions about our bodies. Of course, Jesus Christ graciously freed his adopted siblings from having to earn our salvation by obeying God’s law. Yet that leaves the question…
Mark 1:4-11
Epiphany 1B
Fans of Peter Jackson’s films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy will recall the opening sequence in the final film, The Return of the King. As the movie opens, we are taken back hundreds of years from the main action of the trilogy to the time when the Hobbit-like person Smeagol finds the Ring…
Acts 19:1-7
Epiphany 1B
The woman who told me with a puzzled look on her face, “I don’t think anyone here has the Holy Spirit,” had been part of a church community I pastored for about six months. Yet in that short time she’d concluded that members of our church didn’t have the Holy Spirit. So she sadly left…
John 1:(1-9), 10-18
Christmas 2B
As we come to the first Sunday of 2021, most of us are only too glad to have left 2020 behind. If on New Year’s Eve a year ago we toasted the happy arrival of a new year, this past week we probably did less of a toast to welcome 2021 and offered up instead…
Ephesians 1:3-14
Christmas 2B
Christians know that God didn’t create us to “eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die.” Yet that popular philosophy raises a number of interesting questions. It makes us wonder how God’s people should evaluate the purpose of our lives. Something in a sermon by the Rev. Fleming Rutledge stimulated my thinking about that…
Luke 2:22-40
Christmas 1B
It’s amazing how much detail Luke gives us. If Luke were a movie, it would have been directed by Cecil B. DeMille with a cast of thousands and long, lingering scenes on most every situation imaginable. The Gospel of Mark by comparison is like a PowerPoint presentation where the presenter goes way too fast through…
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