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Acts 4:5-12
Easter 4B
What in the world got into Acts 4’s Peter? Or to put it more theologically, who in the world got into the apostle? I sometimes wonder if even his companion John didn’t blink his eyes or try to clear his ears to make sure it was Peter who was speaking. Of course, Peter’s talking was…
1 John 3:16-24
Easter 4B
“Love” is a word everyone knows and everyone understands. Or so we think. But if that is so, why is it that when we are called to preach on “love,” it can feel so daunting? Maybe it’s because we use the same word for so many things. It would not be unusual, for instance, to…
Luke 24:36-48
Easter 3B
The end of Luke’s Gospel sums it all up pretty well. In swift strokes of Luke’s quill, we move from Easter Sunday evening directly to the Ascension of Jesus (just beyond the bounds of this lection). We learn from Luke’s other New Testament contribution, Acts, that Jesus lingered in physical form for a good forty…
Acts 3:12-19
Easter 3B
When our family visited China a number of years ago, my wife had a hard time keeping up with our sons who all stand over 6 feet 4 inches tall. So we’d often walk a few steps behind them. As we did so, we lost count of how many people passed them, turned around and…
1 John 3:1-7
Easter 3B
It keeps coming up like a bad burp. So much of 1 John is lyric. Few passages talk better about the meaning of love than ones you can find in John’s first epistle. The opening verses of this third chapter likewise are simply gorgeous, waxing eloquent on the love lavished on us by God our…
John 20:19-31
Easter 2B
Doubting Thomas. Don’t you hate it when you make one mistake and it defines you from then on out?! One little mistake and Thomas becomes a morality lesson, a byword, a counter-example of anything we’d ever want to be. In truth, however, there is more than a little of Thomas in all of us. When…
Acts 4:32-35
Easter 2B
Acts 4 is enough to break your heart. Was it really true at the earliest stage of the Christian community that the believers were completely one in heart and mind? Did they really share absolutely everything even as they fell adoringly and reverently at the feet of the apostles, hanging on their every word (and…
1 John 1:1-2:2
Easter 2B
John wants us to be serious about sin. Of course, some Christian traditions—my own Reformed Calvinism perhaps leading the pack—have perennially been pretty good about having such seriousness. As the late Lewis Smedes once wrote (tongue firmly embedded in cheek), “Anyone who knows he’s totally depraved can’t be all bad.” In a more serious vein,…
Mark 16:1-8
Easter Day B
Suppose a grandfather calls his granddaughter over and says to her, “Sweetie, out on the back porch I have a special surprise for you: a new bike!” Upon hearing this news the little girl will probably quickly run out to see the bike. If so, you might describe her as sprinting away from her grandfather,…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Easter Day B
OK, lots to say about these verses but to start: What do you mean, Paul, that Jesus appeared post-Easter to 500 people at once? When in the world did THAT pretty big event happen but that is referenced nowhere else in the Bible except in passing right here in 1 Corinthians 15? How did Luke…
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