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Matthew 1:18-25
Advent 4A
Suppose that one day you were reading a story in which an elderly woman is talking to her pregnant granddaughter. “Now listen, my dear,” the old woman says, “I would ask that you name this child after your grandfather and so give him the name Nelson.” Suppose the young woman agrees. “OK, Grandma, his name…
Romans 1:1-7
Advent 4A
“To God’s beloved ones in Rome.” Such a simple, such a commonplace way to open a letter. We read such a salutation in all of the New Testament’s many epistles. And it’s easy to breeze right past it, hurry on by to get to the meat of the letter, the real important stuff about the…
Matthew 11:2-11
Advent 3A
Last year it was the cups at Starbucks. But every year somebody finds something by which to allege that a coordinated war is being waged on Christmas. Last year since Starbucks stopped putting Merry Christmas on its red holiday paper coffee cups, some customers did a coy end-run on it all by giving their names…
Luke 1:46b-55
Advent 3A
Our news media are full of stories about invasions: invasive species, invading armies, invasive procedures, and, on the entertainment page, invasions of aliens or zombies. Since it is about real life, the Bible is also full of stories about invasions of one sort or another. More importantly, its central story is about God’s invasion of…
James 5:7-10
Advent 3A
You can parachute right down onto James 5:7 if you want to and pretend nothing else is going on here but . . . good luck. Truth is, starting a reading at verse 7 here is like walking into a room where, unbeknownst to you, a horrible fight had just been taking place between two…
Matthew 3:1-12
Advent 2A
Across the United States in recent weeks, there have been tidal waves of accusation and blame, counter-accusations and blame, judgments and more judgments from the left and from the right and from all points in between. Political parties are said to have been judged by the voters. Individual politicians are said to have been repudiated…
Romans 15:4-13
Advent 2A
Acoustics are everything when it comes to how a text is heard but in these days of political turmoil—a roiling pot of many feelings that is bubbling up in also the church—Paul’s call to “accept one another” for the sake of God’s greater glory is bracing. Right now a lot of people I know—including the…
Matthew 24:36-44
Advent 1A
In Anne Tyler’s novel, The Amateur Marriage, we witness a sad series of events. The book’s main characters are Michael and Pauline, a pair of World War II-era sweethearts who get married and eventually have three children. But then one day their oldest child, Lindy, just disappears. She runs away from home and promptly falls…
Romans 13:11-14
Advent 1A
As with any number of Lectionary readings, we have a “this” in Romans 13:11 whose antecedent you cannot know unless you back up to the first ten verses of this passage. The immediate context of the “this” (as in “And do THIS . . .”) is the command to love your neighbor as yourself. The…
Luke 23:33-43
Proper 29C
In most every language I have ever studied, it’s a tiny word. In fact, although I am aware of only a few languages amidst the plethora of tongues spoken on this planet, it’s striking to me that in the languages I know, this tiny word is about as tiny as it gets, consisting of just…
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