1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Epiphany 4B
“Now about food sacrificed to idols….” That is not a zinger opening sentence for a sermon addressed to 21st century North American congregations. Who in the world can relate to something like that? Well, in fact, people in some parts of the world can relate to that very easily, because they do still sacrifice food…
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Epiphany 4B
Talk about your wheel within a wheel (and perhaps within yet another wheel at that!) As Robert Jenson has pointed out, Deuteronomy is the one part of the Bible that is itself presented as a sermon. So when a pastor preaches on Deuteronomy, she is already doing a sermon based on another sermon. But now…
Matthew 4:12-23
Epiphany 3A
We’ve come to call it “the Holy Land.” From the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the country of Jordan in the east, from Syria in the north to the Sinai in the south, travel companies, tour groups, and tourists treat this piece of Middle Eastern real estate as a unity. It’s where Jesus walked…
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Epiphany 7A
If you can’t remember the last sermon or lesson that you preached, taught or heard on a text from the book of Leviticus, you’re not alone. Even most of the preachers and teachers I know who are committed to communicating the Scriptures’ full truth seem reluctant to talk about Leviticus. By appointing just one text…
Mark 1:4-11
Epiphany 1B
Fans of Peter Jackson’s films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy will recall the opening sequence in the final film, The Return of the King. As the movie opens, we are taken back hundreds of years from the main action of the trilogy to the time when Smeagol finds the Ring of power, murdering…
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Epiphany 2B
In Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, at one point someone observes a husband and wife stealing coy glances at each other over dinner and just generally displaying their love. This leads one character to utter the wryly cynical observation, “The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is…
Mark 1:14-20
Epiphany 3B
If Mark were a Broadway play, then the first 13 verses are like the overture. As we come to verse 14, the curtain is about to go up on the drama and when it does we see . . . Galilee. We’re not in a bigger city like Jerusalem or Sepphoris or Rome. Nope, little…
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Epiphany 3B
In Ron Chernow’s new biography of Ulysses S. Grant, we read that in the early days running up to the full outbreak of the Civil War, enthusiasm for the war ran high on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Both sides saw the cause as one of justice. Both sides fervently believed in their cause. …
Mark 1:21-28
Epiphany 4B
It was the Sabbath and so, naturally, the Jews of Capernaum went to the synagogue. Some of them went sleepily, others went with a great weariness following a busy week of work. Still others trekked over in a rather irritable mood for who knows why–maybe it had been no more than that they were out…
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Epiphany 6B
It is Transfiguration Sunday and so naturally the Lectionary gravitates toward passages that talk about light and shining and illumination. On that score, these verses carved out of 2 Corinthians 4 fit the bill. But it’s an open question whether this passage is finally all about that light imagery—it may be more about the nature…
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