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Luke 24:13-35
Easter 3A
After his wife died, C.S. Lewis once wrote that he thought that his grief might be less if he intentionally avoided the places he and his wife Joy had frequented by limiting his travels to only those places where they had never been together. So he switched grocery stores, tried different restaurants, walked only along…
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Easter 3A
Peter’s first Pentecost sermon’s aftermath at least suggests that preaching and teaching the Scriptures is a bit like brandishing a lethally sharp sword. Since it can cut very deeply, its handlers want to be both very careful and prepared to help stop any bleeding our proclamation may cause. Reading the lesson the Lectionary appoints this…
1 Peter 1:17-23
Easter 3A
Years ago I read a book by the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. And it became clear in reading it that he is someone whom I can describe only as a thoroughly secular person. This particular book was a kind of memoir in which Bourdain narrated his story. Of course, I read books all the time…
John 20:19-31
Easter 2A
Poor Thomas. He is the classic example of the old saying, “Make just ONE little mistake and you’re labeled for life!” Or in Thomas’s case, labeled for something more like FOREVER! But honestly, would any of us be so different were we faced with what Thomas confronted? Probably not. We’d be skeptical too. After all,…
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Easter 2A
Sometimes we need help understanding even the events that we ourselves witness. After all, no two-eyewitness accounts, to say nothing of the interpretations of the same incident are exactly the same. For our text’s Peter, there can be no doubt about what has happened in just the past few months. While we don’t know if…
1 Peter 1:3-9
Easter 2A
For all its lyric beauty, at the end of it all these verses from 1 Peter 1 represent a central paradox of the faith, one that Peter seems to be working his own way through even as he writes these words. As an Eastertide text, it’s clear enough to see Peter’s celebration of the resurrection…
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…
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