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Matthew 28:1-10
Easter Day A
We are accustomed to associating Easter Sunday with travel. What we are perhaps not accustomed to realize is that the Easter story involves travel, too. Today we don’t mind traveling in order to see loved ones, including on holidays like Christmas or Easter. Some of us routinely pack up our cars and hit the highway…
Acts 10:34-43
Easter Day A
I sometimes wonder if Peter almost choked on the words: “I now know that God does not show favoritism…” In fact, with one biblical scholar, I sometimes wonder how he ever justified this to himself, much less Jerusalem’s church, as he does later. After all, Jews like Peter had always recognized that God might show…
Colossians 3:1-4
Easter Day A
No one likes being accused of “being so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good.” Karl Marx has his own version of this (religion = narcotic) as have any number of cynics and critics of faith. Yet there it is in Colossians 3: if you have been raised with Christ, set your minds…
Matthew 26:14-27:66
Palm Sunday A
Some years back I heard what was reported to have been among the final gasping words of the famous singer Frank Sinatra. Sinatra’s signature song was “My Way” in which he crooned that when looking back on his life, although he had a few regrets, in the end “I did it my way.” But at…
Philippians 2:5-11
Palm Sunday A
“Shining Like Stars”: A sample sermon The story is told that one evening a man in a Dearborn, Michigan, restaurant bumped into no less than the famous Chrysler chairman, Lee Iacocca. “Oh, Mr. Iacocca,” the man exclaimed, “what an honor to meet you! Say, my name is Jack and I’m having a business dinner with…
John 11:1-45
Lent 5A
Sample Sermons For this Fifth Sunday in Lent Sermon commentary, I again present a sample sermon of mine that I wrote in connection with doing a seminar with Frederick Dale Bruner as he completed his Commentary on John (Eerdmans 2012). “Just about Everywhere” In one of her short stories the writer Annie Dillard has a…
Romans 8:6-11
Lent 5A
Romans 8: is there a better loved, more soaring passage in the New Testament than this one? There is much here to linger over, savor, celebrate. The Lectionary carves out only six verses but the truth is, Romans 8:1-17 form such a logical—and also lyric—unit that I would suggest reading all 17 verses, and indeed,…
John 9:1-41
Lent 4A
Now I See – A Sample Sermon It was probably the big goofy grin on his face that kept some folks from recognizing him. Oh, they’d seen him for years. But rarely had they seen him at eye level. Instead they’d long ago grown accustomed to seeing this hapless man sitting, legs akimbo, on the…
Ephesians 5:8-14
Lent 4A
In one of the verses of this Lectionary selection Paul says that “it is shameless even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.” Apparently the Lectionary agrees because it has carved out these verses from within a wider context where Paul does name—at least a bit more specifically—what some of those deeds of darkness…
John 4:5-42
Lent 3A
Across the centuries people always gather where beverages are available. Even today we sometimes call a restaurant or lounge our favorite “watering hole” because it’s the place where we go after work to unwind with our friends over a glass of wine or something. In fact, even the phrase “scuttlebutt” has similar origins from the…
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