Preaching Connection: Lent

Additional content related to Lent

Philippians 2:5-11

In his excellent commentary on the book of Hebrews (Hebrews, Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), the biblical scholar Tom Long refers to what he calls “the parabola of salvation.” It’s basically the trajectory that Hebrews and, I would suggest, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson trace “from creation downward to the cross up the heavenly place of…

Explore

John 12:12-16

What sets John’s account apart is perspective. Instead of following the story play out from among the disciples and Jesus’s instructions, John tells a story more focused on what the crowd is doing and saying. In fact, even though all attention is on him, Jesus doesn’t speak a word in John 12.12-16. The larger narrative…

Explore

Hebrews 5:5-10

When Jesus’ friends think about his status and work, several things may quickly come to mind. Some Christians readily think of him as the Son of God, Savior and Lord. God’s dearly beloved people may also quickly think of Jesus as a healer, prophet, miracle worker and even a kind of Jewish religious iconoclast. This…

Explore

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Comments, Observations and Questions: Hearing “New Covenant” with the Ears of Ancient Israel The Israelites are in exile. The consequences of their disobedience and failure to keep their side of the bargain haunt them everyday — in the foreign language, customs, foods and, most grievously, religions of Babylon.  So Jeremiah, who is often called the…

Explore

John 12:20-33

Comments, Questions, and Observations There are many familiar themes in this week’s passage: losing one’s life in order to gain it, following Jesus, Jesus speaking about his impending death, and the way that his salvation work expands to all the nations. At the start of Lent, we heard the Father boom down with a message…

Explore

Ephesians 2:1-10

Perhaps few texts, particularly among the New Testament’s epistles, are more familiar or frequently preached than this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s. As a result, preachers may wonder what the Spirit would have them “do” with Ephesians 2:1-10. In our questioning we may even hunt for a novel approach to this gospel proclamation. Such a “safari” may,…

Explore

John 3:14-21

What would Lent be without at least one Sunday focused on confession and repentance? This is that Sunday. We plop right into a conversation in verse 14, though it’s pretty much Jesus talking from here on out to Nicodemus. Even more disorienting, we start with this reference to an Old Testament story from Numbers 21….

Explore

John 2:13-22

So far in Lent we’ve reflected on why we should we heed Jesus’s call to repent and believe that the Kingdom of God has come near, and we’ve realized that we have no idea how God works but that we need to follow him on the crucifix journey in order to learn. This week we…

Explore

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Paul brackets this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson with a paradox. In verse 18 he speaks of God’s “power [dynamis]*.” However, in verse 25 the apostle also refers to God’s “weakness” [asthenes].” Between those apparently contradictory brackets, God’s people find not only the beating heart of our Lenten observance. We also find the heart of the gospel….

Explore

Romans 4:13-25

It sometimes feels as if alienation, hostility and division flourish nearly everywhere we look. Hostilities that have turned violent between Ukrainians and Russians, as well as Israelis and Palestinians. Alienation between American Democrats and Republicans, as well as advocates for traditional and non-traditional understandings of human sexuality. Churches and denominations dividing over race relations, climate…

Explore

Mark 8:31-38

Though it is not included in the lectionary selection, it is worth looking at the verses prior to our text. Seeing Peter go from acknowledging the truth about Jesus, the Christ, to doing what he does here, well, it’s quite the lenten journey. Clearly, Peter does and doesn’t get it. His mental model of what…

Explore

Mark 1:9-15

We’ve gotten snippets of this lectionary text in Epiphany, a bit of an echo as we enter the lenten journey. In fact, knowing that we’re starting Lent this Sunday may help you frame this week’s message built on these three snippets from Mark. Among other things, Lent is a time of preparation; often it works…

Explore

1 Peter 3:18-22

It may be a good thing that the RCL appoints 1 Peter 3:18-22 as this Sunday’s (as well as an earlier Easter) Epistolary Lesson. Otherwise, preachers might succumb to the temptation to skip over it without ever addressing this passage that’s both so theologically rich and, in some places, deeply mysterious. This Sunday marks the…

Explore

Matthew 21:1-11

Comments, Questions, and Observations Somehow, even in the midst of the shouts of praise, the displays of adoration and respect as the crowd prepares the way for Jesus to enter Jerusalem, somehow, even with all this, this text seems understated for what it represents. Or, maybe that’s exactly what it is supposed to feel like…

Explore

Philippians 2:5-11

On this Sunday on which the RCL offers two options for its Epistolary Lesson, preachers might choose to focus on one of those options. Those who wish to pursue a Palm Sunday theme might choose to preach about Matthew 21’s account of it. Those who wish to focus on Jesus’ Passion theme might choose to…

Explore

John 11:1-45

Comments, Questions, and Observations The word “love” is used only three times to describe Jesus’s feelings for the siblings, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, but it permeates the entire narrative. Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus to let him know that their shared beloved, Lazarus, is ill to the point of death. Jesus tells…

Explore

Romans 8:6-11

Remote controlled vehicles, whether cars, boats or even airplanes, make wonderful toys. So wonderful, in fact, that children sometimes argue and even fight over who will control them. There’s something about completely controlling something’s movements that can prove to be almost irresistible. But you’ve ever watched two children grapple over the same “joystick” you’ve probably…

Explore

John 9:1-41

Thus far, the Lenten lectionary journey has brought us from Jesus’s temptations to his nighttime conversation with Nicodemus, to Jacob’s Well in Sychar. In each of these stories, we have been reminded of Christ’s lovingkindness and the very fact that it is impossible for us to understand how the Spirit is at work to change…

Explore

Ephesians 5:8-14

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, Paul summons Christians to “live as children of light” (8). However, we might also say that he offers his readers some walking lessons. After all, the apostle uses some form of the word paripateo no less than six times in chapters 4-6, including three times in Ephesians 5. As the…

Explore

John 4:5-42

Last week, we listened in on a philosophical conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus, and here, we see its message lived out in practice. In fact, over the next few weeks of the lectionary, we are going to watch as Jesus reveals himself to people on the margins, experiencing some sort of separation. Against the backdrop…

Explore

Romans 5:1-11

Hope seems to be in far shorter supply than despair in the 21st century. In fact, were someone to post a list of endangered “virtue species,” hope might join Christian unity near or at the top of the list. In fact, divisions among Christians sometimes drains some of some of God’s dearly beloved people’s hope….

Explore

John 3:1-17

The fact that perhaps the most well-known bible verse, John 3.16, is part of this philosophical and ontological mind-bending conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus never ceases to fascinate me. Nicodemus is a leader of his faith community and he comes to speak with Jesus in the quiet and solitude of the night. I’m not sure…

Explore

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

Few things seem more deeply lodged within the human heart than the longing to belong to something bigger than ourselves. Few people articulated that longing more poignantly than the Irish poet John O’Donohue. In his book Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong (Harper Perennial, 2000) he wrote, “The hunger to belong is…

Explore

Matthew 4:1-11

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” was he thinking about this time in his life? We start Lent each year with an account of how Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness where he was thoroughly tried and tested by the…

Explore

Romans 5:12-19

Most of Jesus’ friends have a mental list of God’s attributes. We generally think of God as being loving and just, gracious and holy, patient and forgiving. But I’m not sure many Christians naturally include in their list of God’s attributes the quality of generosity. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson provides a good antidote to that…

Explore

Bi-Level Living

I love this story, but I’ve always been struck at the odd way it flows. It seems odd to me that, on the one hand, Jesus seems to be above it all and know exactly what’s going to happen. On the other hand he is overwhelmed by the reality of death. Somehow they don’t seem…

Explore

The Seeker

In the last 25 years or so a new word has become very prominent in the American church scene. The word is “seeker.” We are a nation of spiritual seekers. People everywhere are looking for that spiritual lift, that tie to something deeper that will provide some meaning in this crazy world. Many churches have…

Explore

The Weapons of our Warfare

The first verse of our reading is rather shocking if you think about it. “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.” We don’t usually think of temptation as a spiritual exercise. Jesus had just been baptized. In his baptism, Jesus had taken his place with all the…

Explore

Palm Sunday: The Indignant Re-entry

In the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible illustrator Barry Moser provides hundreds of haunting images to accompany various Bible passages. His engraving for the Triumphal Entry captures something of this story’s essence. In the picture we see Jesus astride a little donkey colt. Jesus looks a little ridiculous riding on such a small animal–one of his bare…

Explore

Lent 4B: Out of the Night

Few people would dispute the assertion that John 3:16 is the single most well-known verse in the Bible. Children memorize it in Sunday school, the Gideons traditionally have placed this verse on the front page of their Bibles (usually printing it in dozens of languages), missionaries often use it as the starting point for evangelism….

Explore

Lent 3B: House Zeal

Fred Rogers, or “Mister Rogers” as we all knew and loved him, made a name for himself and became famous over the years because of his gentle spirit, warm smile, and quiet effectiveness. According to family and friends, there was actually no distinction between the Mister Rogers on the PBS television show and the real-life…

Explore

Lent 2B: The Lenten Fork

According to that great font of wisdom, Yogi Berra, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Mark 8 is a kind of theological fork in the road. This chapter is the hinge of Mark’s gospel. Not only is this the exact middle of Mark in terms of chapters and verses, it…

Explore

Lent 1B: Where the Spirit Leads

In a well-known sermon, the preacher Fred Craddock once said that you cannot get to Jesus without going through John the Baptist first.  Apparently even Jesus could not get to be Jesus without John, either.  Because his baptism by John in the Jordan River is included in all four of the Gospels (and that does…

Explore

Philippians 2:5-11

Comments, Observations, and Questions This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson points its proclaimers to the horrible degradation and subsequent exaltation of Christ Jesus. So God the Son is always the primary subject of any proclamation of Philippians 2:5-11. Its proclaimers can find a wealth of good help proclaiming Christ Jesus in this site’s various commentaries. But those…

Explore

Luke 19:28-40

Comments, Questions, and Observations “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” These words are shouted by a “multitude of disciples” as Jesus rides on a donkey into Jerusalem (v 37). The people are compelled to shout these praises because of all…

Explore

Four Pages: Jesus the Lonely Victor

Though the crowds that surround Jesus have shrunk since Palm Sunday, at our text’s beginning his friends still surround him. At its end, however, those friends are nowhere to be found. Jesus’ persistence in the face of their desertion says something about both them and him. After the sun sets on the last full day…

Explore

John 12:1-8

Comments, Questions, and Observations Jesus is anointed around the time of Holy Week in each of the gospels, but the details of each account are markedly different. Here in the Gospel of John, it occurs earlier in the timeline, before Jesus enters Jerusalem for Passover. In fact, John’s telling of the event is directly connected…

Explore

Philippians 3:4b-13

Good gospel preaching, like faithful Christian living, always leans forward rather than backwards. While some Christians long for “the good old days,” this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson expresses the Apostle Paul’s longing for the good coming days. Of course, Philippians 3 says quite a bit about that on what Paul can look back. But the apostle…

Explore

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Comments, Questions, and Observations Like Easter and Christmas, you sometimes wonder what else is left to say about such well-known stories like the Prodigal Son. But given the liturgical posture of Lent, and thinking about last week’s passage of warning, we are given a natural link to build between the elder brother and the parable…

Explore

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

There are Sundays when nearly all of us feel like the Spirit inspired the Scriptures’ authors to address the day’s headlines. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is one of those times. As I write this Commentary, Russia continues to escalate its assault on Ukraine and its people. Its troops recently bombed a maternity and children’ hospital,…

Explore

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Comments, Observations, and Questions Gospel proclaimers who don’t have a strong working knowledge of the Scriptures’ original languages benefit from access to a good Greek and Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible. After all, English translations of the Scriptures sometimes obscure important points that the Holy Spirit makes through their original languages. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson provides (at…

Explore

Luke 13:1-9

Comments, Questions, and Observations Why did the bad thing happen? Did they deserve it? This is how the text starts. And just to get it out of the way, Jesus doesn’t answer the why question. When it comes to theodicy, Scripture rarely, if ever, does. Instead, God’s wisdom is to turn our hearts and eyes…

Explore

Philippians 3:17-4:1

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Paul calls his Philippian audience to “join with others in following” his “example” (17). To 21st century ears, however, such an invitation sounds like nails scraping an old-fashioned chalkboard. Its apparent arrogance doesn’t just, after all, hurt our ears. Such a bold call to imitation also no longer fits into…

Explore

Luke 13:31-35

Jesus is a man on a mission. He is in the region of the Galilee, not yet in Jerusalem for the events of holy week, and we continue our lenten journey by following him towards his suffering death. We don’t really know the motives of the Pharisees as they warn Jesus to get out of…

Explore

Luke 4:1-13

Comments, Questions and Observations Couched between our text for this Sunday and the baptism of Jesus (Luke 3.21-22) is Jesus’ genealogy. The words immediately before Jesus entering the wilderness are, “the son of Adam, the son of God.” (3.38) Thus, not only can we read Jesus’ forty days of trials in the wilderness alongside the…

Explore

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

This passage is at once lyric and heartbreaking.  It’s lyric for all the reasons I will detail below in terms of how handily these verses get at some very core spiritual truths regarding our lives within God’s creation.  It’s heartbreaking because you sense that things never quite worked out this way once the people of…

Explore

Romans 10:8b-13

Comments, Observations, and Questions Some Christians at least imply that grace is what we might call a “Yesbut” phenomenon. “Yes,” they say, “We’re saved by grace alone through faith. But people also need to oppose gay marriage or voting restrictions in order to be truly saved.” Or “Yes, people who confess that Jesus is Lord…

Explore

Good Friday: Explaining (Without Explaining Away)

They should have seen it coming. That’s what a number of people said about the U.S. Intelligence community following the horror of September 11. The CIA, the FBI, our spies in other countries: no one saw the attack coming, but not a few critics think they should have. When something big happens, we want explanations,…

Explore

Palm Sunday: A Flash in the Dark

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is like a flashbulb going off in a dark room.  Most of us know what that’s like.  You are sitting in the middle of a very dark room when suddenly, maybe as a prank, somebody pushes the test button on a camera’s flash.  Just before the flash, the room is so…

Explore

Lent 4: Everything I Have

He had a point, you know.  The older brother: he had a point.  And if you don’t believe that, then maybe it will help to admit that it’s a point you and I have made in the past and it’s a point we are liable to make again in the future, too.  I’m not saying…

Explore

Lent 2: Christ the Hen

When I was a kid in the early 1970s, Saturday night meant watching my favorite TV show, Emergency!  I loved that show about two brave paramedics from Squad 51 of the Los Angeles Fire Department.  When Johnny and Roy were in danger, my pulse raced.  Thanks to my father, who was a real-life volunteer fireman…

Explore

Exodus 20:1-17

On this Third Sunday of Lent, the RCL continues its focus on the theme of covenant.  Though our immediate text does not mention covenant, it is very clear from the context (Exodus 19-24) that the Ten Commandments are part of a covenant making ceremony between the God who liberated his people and those liberated people. …

Explore

Mark 1:9-15

Lent begins in the wilderness.  And it’s not a terribly safe place to be all things being equal.  Some years ago after a seminar I was attending in Tucson, Arizona, wrapped up around the noon hour, my wife and I decided to check out a nearby National Park.  We took a big bottle of water…

Explore

Genesis 9:8-17

As we begin our annual Lenten journey to the cross and the tomb, our Old Testament reading takes us to the new journey of the human race after The Flood.  In words that almost directly parallel the Genesis account of creation, the opening verses of Genesis 9 lay out God’s mandates for the new human…

Explore

Philippians 3:4b-14

“Are you becoming perfect?” is the perhaps strange way Carole Noren, to whom I owe many ideas for this Commentary, begins a sermon on Philippians 3.  It is, however, also an appropriate question, in light of the amount of attention the New Testament pays to the issue of perfection. While Christians may sense that the…

Explore

Exodus 17:1-7

Israel is wandering in territory that is all too familiar to us—in the great wilderness of In Between, between release from bondage and possession of the Promised Land.  As the New Interpreters Bible puts it, this passage is “a paradigm for the crisis of faith that occurs between bondage and well-being.” Thus it is relevant…

Explore

John 11:1-45

Sample Sermon: “Just about Everywhere” : In one of her short stories the writer Annie Dillard has a scene in which a family is sadly gathered at a grave to commit a loved one’s body to the earth. At one point the minister intones the familiar words from I Corinthians 15, “Where, O Death, is…

Explore

Romans 8:6-11

Romans 8: is there a better loved, more soaring passage in the New Testament than this one?   There is much here to linger over, savor, celebrate.  The Lectionary carves out only six verses but the truth is, Romans 8:1-17 form such a logical—and also lyric—unit that I would suggest reading all 17 verses, and indeed,…

Explore

Ezekiel 37:1-14

At first glance, this famous vision of the valley of dry bones seems more like an Easter text than a Lenten text.  I mean, if the text left us with a valley full of dry bones, it might fit the somber mood of the last week of Lent.  But it doesn’t, because the bleached-out bones…

Explore

John 9:1-41

Sample Sermon: Now I See: It was probably the big goofy grin on his face that kept some folks from recognizing him.  Oh, they’d seen him for years.  But rarely had they seen him at eye level.  Instead they’d long ago grown accustomed to seeing this hapless man sitting, legs akimbo, on the ground near…

Explore

Psalm 23

Psalm 23 is hands-down the most famous of the 150 psalms in the Psalter.  In terms of recognizability, Psalm 23 is probably right up there with popular ditties like “Roses are red, violets are blue,” with Shakespearean sonnets like “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” and well-known song lyrics like “Happy birthday to…

Explore

Ephesians 5:8-14

Few Lectionary texts begin more mysteriously than this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson.  “You were once darkness,” Paul reminds Ephesus’s Christians, “but now you are light in the Lord” (8). The apostle seems to assert that God’s adopted sons and daughters don’t just naturally live in spiritual darkness.  We naturally are spiritual darkness.  God doesn’t just summon…

Explore

1 Samuel 16:1-13

In our first reading for this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we are introduced to the most famous king of Israel, David son of Jesse.  It’s a favorite passage for many Bible students because of the parade of likely candidates from Jesse’s family, each of whom is rejected, and then the entrance of the least likely…

Explore

John 4:5-42

Across the centuries people always gather where beverages are available.  Even today we sometimes call a restaurant or lounge our favorite “watering hole” because it’s the place where we go after work to unwind with our friends over a glass of wine or something.  In fact, even the phrase “scuttlebutt” has similar origins from the…

Explore

Psalm 95

Growing up in a tradition that had once upon a time been founded on Psalm singing only in church, I sang lots of psalms in my boyhood church even long, long after my Reformed tradition had added also hymns to our standard Psalter Hymnal songbook.  Even as a young boy, though, I was struck by…

Explore

Romans 5:1-11

While the kind of peace about which Paul writes in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson may seem hard to define, it may be even harder to achieve.  Perhaps, however, that’s at least partly because we sometimes start to work for peace in the wrong places. We sometimes first think of the lack of peace in places…

Explore

John 3:1-17

In John 3 Jesus does something quite unexpected: he reaches back to Numbers 21 from the Old Testament and evokes the image of that bronze serpent Moses lifted over the people as a cure for snakebites.  The Israelites had to look at an image of the very thing that was afflicting them, and somehow doing…

Explore

Psalm 121

For the second week in a row the Year A RCL has assigned a psalm that was also the Year C Psalm lection just a few months ago.  So with modest modifications, here is a bit of a rerun on my recent thoughts on preaching this well-known—and very lovely—Hebrew poem. When I was a little…

Explore

Romans 4:1-5,13-17

When I was a teenager, we liked to sing a song that also had motions.  With arms and legs flailing, we’d sing something like: “Father Abraham/ Had many sons;/ Many sons had Father Abraham;/ And I am one of them,/ And so are you,/ So let’s all praise the Lord.” Now once you got past…

Explore