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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…
John 14:8-17 (25-27)
Pentecost C
This is our Pentecost text, of course, but the setting in John 14 takes us back to that last night before Jesus died, some 53 days before Pentecost arrived. What that means is that even though this text ends up talking about peace and of Jesus’ telling the disciples “do not be afraid” (Jn. 14:27),…
Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost C
We have come to the conclusion of our fifty day celebration of Easter. It is fascinating to me that our exit from Dr. Luke’s account of the spread of Easter faith is the on ramp to that whole story. With this Pentecost story, we loop back to where it all began. Even as Luke tells…
Romans 8:14-17
Pentecost C
Parents take better care of their attractive children than they do their ugly ones. At least that’s what an article in a 2006 edition of The New York Times reported Canadian researchers concluded after observing more than 400 parents’ treatment of their children during 14 different trips to supermarkets. They deduced that physical attractiveness makes…
John 17:20-26
Easter 7C
One of the most creative preachers I know who always manages to approach texts in a very fresh way is Debbie Blue. For this text, she reminds us that biblically “glory doesn’t shine, it bleeds.” You can hear that sermon by clicking here. What does Jesus mean by all his talk here about “glory”? “I…
Acts 16:16-34
Easter 7C
Our reading for today serves as the exclamation point on Dr. Luke’s history of the Gospel’s spread to the ends of the earth. No, we haven’t gotten to that far horizon yet, but Luke has introduced all the major themes and players that will get us there. This story contains all those elements that will…
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Easter 7C
How can we understand Christ’s promise to come “soon” that he makes not once but twice in just this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s seven verses? After all, few of our definitions of “soon” would include the two thousand years that have elapsed since he made first it. In Revelation 22 John’s dazzling visions of that coming…
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