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Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16
Proper 9C
This Sunday brings us to the end of the Revised Common Lectionary’s very brief tour of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia. The epistle’s tone is among the strictest if not harshest of all the Pauline letters. Yet the apostle ends it with verse 18’s “The grace [charis*] of our Lord Jesus Christ be…
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Proper 9C
These words are utterly familiar and yet so few of us (myself included) actually take up the fullness of the call that Jesus gives to the seventy in this passage. Do we even take it up in part? Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem and he commissions pairs of his followers to go out…
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Proper 8C
Our three sons are taller than my relatively tall wife and me. They range in height from about 6’2 to 6’6. So it can be challenging for us to walk with them. When our sons are walking with purpose, they walk far faster than my wife and I do. They, in fact, must often slow…
Luke 9:51-62
Proper 8C
These two discipleship scenarios are an interesting pair. On the one hand, the first scene depicts matters post-decision to follow Jesus. In the other, we have a series of stumbling blocks to saying yes. Going a little deeper than connecting them as discipleship stories, these two scenarios say something about how we are disciples of…
Galatians 3:23-29
Proper 7C
Some advertisements thrive on presenting various “before-and-after” scenarios. Diet pills and plans like to place side by side pictures of people who were overweight before they went on their regimen but looked healthier after they completed it. Remodelers and others also employ pictures of kitchens before and after they did their work in order to…
Luke 8.26-39
Proper 7C
There is no doubt that this is a difficult passage to preach. Very few of us will feel like we have real world, modern experience with demon possession—and some of us might not even believe it’s a real thing in this age. For those of us who look to match trouble and grace in the…
Romans 5:1-5
Trinity Sunday C
Hope is not just the name of my alma mater’s most heated rival. It’s also that without which no image bearer of God can truly live. While their hearts may beat and brains may still function, people who have no hope are, as Lewis Smedes once noted, basically walking dead people. Conversely even if their…
John 16:12-15
Trinity Sunday C
Even on the best of days, if ever anything counted as information that we “cannot bear,” the nature of the Trinity is one of them. The nature of the three persons and their union will forever be out of our reach, but at least we know that we will have some inklings about it because…
Romans 8:14-17
Pentecost
No one should be surprised that the Revised Common Lectionary’s editors included Romans 8:14-17 in their “rotation” of Pentecost Sunday Epistolary Lessons. After all, on this Sunday on which the Church celebrates God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to all of God’s people, it speaks of the Spirit four times. In The Heidelberg Catechism Answer…
Acts 2:1-21/Genesis 11:1-9
Pentecost
The people of the earth have just been through it. The whole of their lives drowned in a flood. Because of their wickedness. And because God is a Holy God, God is not afraid to punish wickedness. But now that God has set the people on dry ground, they are still a little shook. So…
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