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Luke 10:25-37
Proper 10C
If you are a baseball fan, you might remember a bizarre play in Game 5 of the 2015 World Series playoff between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Texas Rangers. The game was tied 2-2 in the 7th inning and Texas had a man on third base. The Toronto pitcher had just thrown a pitch…
Colossians 1:1-14
Proper 10C
When my family and I first moved to the Washington D.C. area to serve the church I pastor, a wise colleague told me to read a lot of books. He said members of area churches like it when their pastors quote books. “They’re smart people who like to learn things,” my colleague told me. The…
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Proper 9C
Jesus came to proclaim the nearness of the kingdom of God, and in Luke 10 he is authorizing a wider band of disciples to go out and do the same thing. He’s not sending them out to be door-to-door salespeople hawking magazine subscriptions or lawncare services. He doesn’t want them to look like moochers or…
Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16
Proper 9C
A text whose dominant metaphors including sowing and reaping seems somehow especially appropriate, at least for residents of the northern hemisphere at this time of the year. This month, after all, some “northern” gardeners and farmers are at least beginning to “reap” the cucumbers, chilies, peas, potatoes, onions and other crops they’ve “sown.” Eugene Peterson,…
Luke 9:51-62
Proper 8C
Fred Craddock once delivered a sermon on “The Gospel as Hyperbole.” In this message he pointed out that the gospel is loaded with statements that are, on the face of them, ridiculous. We’re told to remove the log-pole from our own eyes before criticizing others. We’re told that if we have even a smidge of…
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Proper 8C
This week’s national celebrations in North America give Canadians and Americans opportunities to think about freedom. July 1 is, after all, the Canada Day that at least some people think of as Canada’s birthday. July 4 is the day on which Americans celebrate the anniversary of their declaration of independence from Great Britain. So one…
Luke 8:26-39
Proper 7C
What do you suppose they were all so afraid of? After all, that is the bottom line of this dramatic and startling story in Luke 8: all the witnesses and all the townsfolk were afraid. What was it that did them in, fear-wise? Was it the sight of all those dead pigs floating in the…
Galatians 3:23-29
Proper 7C
Too many white Americans including Christians have made a mess of race relations by endorsing the horrors of things like Native American displacement, slavery, Japanese-American internment camps and even real estate redlining. In fact, whether it’s in connection with the abomination that is racial profiling or the controversy that surrounds affirmative action, we still manage…
John 16:12-15
Trinity Sunday C
Nowhere in the gospels does Jesus talk as much about the Holy Spirit as here in John 16. Indeed, as Frederick Dale Bruner notes, the Spirit receives, at best, modest treatment and attention in the Synoptic Gospels. But then, that seems to be true of the New Testament generally. It seems that the people who…
Romans 5:1-5
Trinity Sunday C
Trinity Sunday can be one of the most intimidating days on which to proclaim God’s Word. It’s not just that while Christians profess that it’s a biblical truth, the Bible never actually uses the term “Trinity.” It’s not even just that the Trinity is notoriously difficult to even begin to explain. It’s also that if…
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