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1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Proper 24A
These words are very old. Ancient. Scholars differ on most everything, of course, but it is possible that 1 Thessalonians was the first of Paul’s epistles. And since we are quite certain that the writing of the epistles pre-dates the writing down of the Gospels by a good bit of time, it is fully possible…
Matthew 22:1-14
Proper 23A
In a seminar on Matthew’s gospel, Tom Long pointed out that in Matthew, it’s never a good thing to be addressed as “friend.” Every time someone is called a friend in Matthew, what follows is not pleasant! Jesus himself was referred to as a “friend” by the religious authorities in Matthew 11 but it was…
Philippians 4:1-9
Proper 23A
I imagine they blushed a fairly deep shade of magenta. I imagine them sitting there as part of the Sunday worship service, surrounded by the rest of the congregation. On this particular Lord’s day, in addition to the usual components of the liturgy, they had the added special blessing of hearing a letter from their…
Matthew 21:33-46
Proper 22A
******BOOM******* That’s probably not a word (or a sound effect) you associate with the parables of Jesus. But it’s more apt than you might think. Eugene Peterson famously said that parables are narrative time bombs. These are stealthy stories that steal into people’s hearts, confusing them initially, throwing them off balance for a while….
Philippians 3:4b-14
Proper 22A
What happens to your life after you encounter something so shocking, it both retrospectively and prospectively changes everything you ever knew or thought you knew? In some ways, Paul’s words in Philippians 3 are an extended answer to such a question. As Paul begins this third chapter, it quickly becomes apparent that like so many…
Matthew 21:23-32
Proper 21A
A while back I heard an old Jewish witticism in which someone asks his rabbi, “Why do rabbis always answer a question with another question?” to which the rabbi replied, “Why shouldn’t a rabbi answer a question with another question?” So also in Matthew 21: Jesus side-steps the question of the Pharisees as to the…
Philippians 2:1-13
Proper 21A
I have heard a certain story several times, each time involving different people so I have no idea if it ever really happened to anyone or not. But one version of it that I heard was from the old “Tonight Show” starring Johnny Carson. The famous singer Frank Sinatra was a guest and in the…
Matthew 20:1-16
Proper 20A
Sometimes the good sermon is the one that gets under people’s skins and bothers them. Sometimes we preachers even want this, which is why it can be disappointing in its own way some weeks to have people at the church door say “I really enjoyed that sermon, pastor!” You want to reply “I was hoping…
Philippians 1:21-30
Proper 20A
They say a death sentence has a way of focusing the mind, and certainly the Apostle Paul could attest to this. He is in prison as he writes to the Philippians and even though he just went out of his way to assure the Philippians both that he was doing fine and that even the…
Matthew 18:21-35
Proper 19A
Matthew 18 reminds us of a core Christian conviction: Forgiveness is something we live, something we embody, every moment. But that only stands to reason. After all, the very foundation on which our identity as Christians is built is nothing less than the death and resurrection of Jesus and the flood of gracious forgiveness which…
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