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1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Epiphany 5C
In the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday Paul describes his theology of the resurrection. Yet he insists that the Corinthians’ confusion about it isn’t just one among many problems that he’s already addressed. Lack of clarity about the resurrection isn’t like confusion about, for example, sexuality, food offered to idols and lawsuits…
Luke 4:21-30
Epiphany 4C
I don’t quite understand this passage. Or at least I don’t understand how it turns out. It’s not so much what is contained in this Lectionary snippet of verses 21-30 as how this call follows on what we saw last week in the first part of this story. After all, Luke 4:15 assures us that…
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Epiphany 4C
In the more than twenty years that I’ve ministered with and to the church I currently serve, I’ve never preached on 1 Corinthians 13. Now I remember why. Not only is it so lovely that it nearly defies description. It’s also like a figurative lit stick of dynamite. So I take comfort in the assertion…
Luke 4:14-21
Epiphany 3C
Suspense! If you stop at verse 21 as the Lectionary would have you to do and hold off on what happens in verses 22 and following next week, then a sermon on this text ends in some suspense as we wait to see how the people will react to what Jesus has just said and…
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Epiphany 3C
When asked to define “church,” at least some people answer by talking about a place like a building, an event like a worship service, or even a kind of organization that people join. But when Paul defines “church,” he speaks of a living organism into which God’s children are born again, by God’s grace. He…
John 2:1-11
Epiphany 2C
Apparently we are going to have to revise our definition of “glory.” Sometimes things happen in life that make us update long-held notions and definitions. It reminds me of the scene from the movie A Beautiful Mind in which the socially inept genius mathematician John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) haltingly proposes to his…
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Epiphany 2C
God’s adopted sons and daughters generally like being related to Christ. Through him, after all, we receive not only the gift of salvation, but also eternal life. On top of that, we don’t have to deal with our brother Christ face to face. So he doesn’t get on our nerves by doing things like hanging…
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Epiphany 1C
Luke’s substantial narrative powers surely did not suddenly fail him in this third chapter. So we need a different kind of explanation for the curious way by which Luke frames up this part of the story. Consider: First, we get the odd insertion in verses 19-20 about John’s imprisonment following his finally crossing the line…
Acts 8:14-17
Epiphany 1C
While it’s at least tangentially related to this Sunday’s gospel lesson, Acts 8:14-17 may seem like a rather odd text for the second Sunday of the new year. It isn’t, after all, just a mysterious text that even the most learned scholars struggle to fully understand. While the Lectionary longs to unite Christians around the…
Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany C
Strange, isn’t it? For ever-so-long now the Church has often been seen by those outside of the Church—and not infrequently by even a good many folks inside the Church—as being a kind of exclusive club. Too often it all comes down to who’s in, who’s out. In history popes and other religious leaders have used…
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