Content related to New Testament

Home » New Testament » Page 71

Matthew 4:12-23

Epiphany 3A

We’ve come to call it “the Holy Land.”  From the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the country of Jordan in the east, from Syria in the north to the Sinai in the south, travel companies, tour groups, and tourists treat this piece of Middle Eastern real estate as a unity.  It’s where Jesus walked…

Read More

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Epiphany 3A

The Reformed expression of the Christian faith’s many strengths have not always included Christian unity.  Reformed Christians’ actions have sometimes tweaked an old saying to sound something like, “Where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name … there you have three or four Reformed denominations.”  Presbyterians sometimes talk about “split p’s”. So this Sunday’s…

Read More

Four Pages: Afraid and Silent

Anyone who has ever been a teacher or a parent or a leader or an instructor of any kind knows the truth of something I read a while back.  The author was a teacher and said, “Sometimes a student will come to you and say ‘I didn’t understand that one point in class today.’  And…

Read More

John 1:29-42

Epiphany 2A

The lamb of God.  Agnus Dei.  The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.   Agnus Dei tolle peccato mundi.  It is so familiar to us.  Even if you Google that Latin phrase Agnus Dei, you instantly get over 10 million hits.  And that’s in Latin!  (Maybe these days quid quo pro…

Read More

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Epiphany 2A

This Sunday’s RCL’s Epistolary Lesson may seem like a strange way for Paul to begin his first letter to the Corinthians.  Of course, it would not be a particularly strange way to begin most communications.  1 Corinthians 1 begins, after all, with (for its day) a fairly typical greeting.  What’s more, many of us are…

Read More

Matthew 3:13-17

Epiphany 1A

Poor John.  It didn’t look right.  What was going on here?  This was not the public appearance of Jesus that John had set everyone up to see (cf. Matthew 3:1-12 for goodness sake!!!).  As Matthew 3 ends, you can almost picture John the Baptist carrying on with the rest of that day’s baptisms with a…

Read More

Acts 10:34-43

Epiphany 1A

On this Sunday on which the RCL invites us to contemplate Jesus’ baptism, it omits the account of Cornelius’ baptism from its Epistolary Lesson.  That may at least imply that the RCL is less interested in the Romans or even Jesus’s baptism than with the baptized Jesus (and his Church’s) mission.  A mission that has…

Read More

John 1:(1-9), 10-18

Christmas 2A

The Lectionary may get the last laugh here, and savvy preachers can curl up the corners of their mouths to join the mirth.  Because here it is the first Sunday of a new year and really the first Sunday in the 2019-2020 holiday season after Christmas is officially finished.  For weeks now, starting well before…

Read More

Ephesians 1:3-14

Christmas 2A

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.  How do we think about why God has put us here? Something in a…

Read More

Matthew 2:13-23

Christmas 1A

Wasn’t it just Christmas four days ago?  Didn’t we all just get to visit the manger again, sing all those wonderful carols, feel aglow in the wash of twinkling lights and glimpses of angels fluttering overhead?  But now Matthew, fresh off his exceedingly short birth narrative in chapter 1 and then the Magi story at…

Read More