Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith
[…] in a trinitarian sense is always ‘persons-in-relation’ and we mean by it something private, individual, separate, apart, as in “I’ve got mine; too bad about you.” But Pentecost is a communal event including diverse tongues that bring people together, not apart. It reverses Babel. John on Patmos, Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, Daniel to Israel […]
The Four Pages of the Sermon
[…] need to major in God and in grace. Social justice liberals and evangelicals alike tend to give us shoulds, musts, and have-tos. We don’t get enough Easter, Pentecost, Ascension. We get Emerson under other names. We get self-reliance preached to us, and it can’t save us. Preachers avoid grace because it ‘lets people off […]
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Easter 2A
[…] to shutter your hardware store for good, for instance). Still, getting Matthias on board was about all we know about the time that passed between Ascension and Pentecost. But then the promised Holy Spirit did come and if the Spirit made once-weak and awkward and shy disciples into bold preachers, it is hugely clear […]
Acts 2:42-47
Easter 4A
[…] fly, you cannot fault them if they don’t stay up there too long. It’s just amazing they can fly at all. And by the Holy Spirit of Pentecost who launched the church in the first place, all through history our feeble, flawed, and faulty congregations have pretty consistently managed to do a whole lot […]
Ascension Day: How We See Things
[…] it is. This isn’t an impossible task for us because in a very real sense it’s not a task at all. It’s who we are by grace. Pentecost is coming up in two weeks. We are drenched in the Spirit’s presence now and as a result of that divine gift, everything changes. God has […]
Acts 10:34-43
Easter Day A
[…] proselytes in the past, becoming sort of Jewish. But these Gentiles have now believed in their Jewish Jesus and received the same Spirit they had received at Pentecost. The Gentiles have a Pentecost, too. What does this mean for the church going ahead? How Jewish do these Gentiles believers have to become? How many […]
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Epiphany 7A
[…] Gospel account makes plain) but even he is not the end point of God’s desire to dwell once again in all creation. The Spirit will come at Pentecost and when this happens—and as Paul makes plain in 1 Corinthians 3—all believers become living Temples of this very Spirit as God has made a major […]
Matthew 9:35-10:8
Proper 6A
[…] things of Jesus. Indeed, if Luke’s account is to be believed, most of their misunderstandings as to the nature of Jesus’ kingdom persist all the way until Pentecost. Remember Acts 1 and the moments right before Jesus’ ascension into heaven when—even at that late date some forty days after the resurrection—the disciples ask, “Lord, […]
Acts 4:32-35
Easter 2B
[…] my sermon, “The Second Greatest Easter Miracle.” The first, of course, was the resurrection of Jesus. Others might argue that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was the second, but I think that Pentecost was a miracle in its own right. Still others might nominate the conversion of 3000 people in response […]
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Easter 2A
[…] the stage of history, particularly the history of the church. For the next 3 Sundays, for example, we will focus on the first Christian sermon, preached on Pentecost by Peter, as reported in Acts 2. That chapter shows us the centrality of Christ’s resurrection to the Gospel, the stunning response to the preaching of […]
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