Movies for Preaching
E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982) – 3
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Directed by Steven Spielberg, Written by Melissa Mathison. Music by John Williams. Staring Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote. 115 mins. Rated PG. Lest there be any doubt about exactly where that blockbuster E.T. The Extraterrestrial was headed the one shot suddenly, and indisputably, makes that all clear, and—surprise–what you…
Additional content related to Resurrection
Acts 17:22-31
Well, you win some and you lose some. Paul had some experience with the truth of that old adage, and some of the relevant experiences can be seen in Acts 17 and Paul’s famous conversation with the Athenians at the Areopagus. The day was not without its spiritual victories. The chapter concludes by telling us…
Acts 7:55-60
On the face of it, a six-verse Bible passage that centers on the brutal murder of an innocent man does not appear to be an edifying preaching text. Perhaps that seems all the more to be the case when we realize this passage is assigned in the Year A Lectionary for the Season of Eastertide…
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Garry Wills once wrote a fine book titled, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. Wills claims that in the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln—in the span of a scant 272 words that took him all of three minutes to deliver—forever altered our understanding of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln was not even the main…
Psalm 16
Probably we misread Psalm 16, or at least its most famous verses about how our bodies will rest secure. We have all been to our share of funerals that lift out verses 9-11 and put a resurrection spin on them. And maybe as Christians exegeting the Old Testament there is something right about that. All…
John 20:1-18
Perhaps you have heard, or even led, the same prayer as me before preaching: it’s something along the lines of, “Lord, give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts and minds to understand, and hands and feet willing to go and do what we hear from you in the Word today.” These petitions are…
Acts 10:34-43
“He was not seen by all the people.” I’ll say. This is what Peter tells Cornelius in Acts 10 as he sums up the story arc of Jesus’ life, including the world-altering fact of his having been raised from the dead. Jesus was raised again! He arose!! But . . . by way of a…
Psalm 118:1, 2, 14-24
What every preacher needs on Easter Sunday is an angle. Everyone already knows the story, so it is hard to astonish people as the women astonished the disciples with the news of an empty tomb on that first Easter morning. To help people experience that primitive astonishment and the kind of joyful thanksgiving to which…
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Sample sermon: It is a sad statement on the last 100 years that we can rather easily imagine the scene Ezekiel describes in his famous 37th chapter. Whether or not the people in Ezekiel’s original audience had ever seen such a valley full of bones, we have. We’ve seen the mass graves of Auschwitz and…
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…
Lent 5A: Neither Bang Nor Whimper
As Time magazine recently pointed out, two famous twentieth century poets both weighed in on the subject of the universe’s end. Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire / Some say in ice. / I hold with those who favor fire.” On the other side T.S. Eliot wrote, “This is the…
Luke 20:27-38
It is interesting that the Sadducees are the ones to pose this particular question to Jesus because they did not believe in a heaven. Using this story about a wife of seven brothers, they believe, will show the absurdity of the concept. To put it in its most basic summary form, the Sadducees believed that…
John 20:19-31
Comments, Questions and Observations Often, the focus of this week’s Easter Lectionary is on Thomas. His “doubt” is rather relatable, and it seems to be what Jesus reflects directly upon when he declares a beatitude about belief. (It really is too bad for Thomas that he wasn’t there that Easter evening with the other disciples….
Luke 24:1-12
Comments, Questions and Observations When we begin reading this account it might seem like it is an anonymous group headed to the tomb at dawn—the members of the group aren’t named until all the way in verse 10. But, we know from the close of the previous chapter, as they followed Jesus’ body to his…
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Comments, Observations, and Questions Death stinks – both literally and figuratively. While such a reminder may not seem like a particularly popular (or common) way to begin an Easter proclamation, it is the context within which we begin any and every proclamation of Easter’s great news. Even after Jesus rose from the dead, death still…
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…
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
One of the central questions some Christians have about the resurrection is, “Will we recognize each other’s resurrected persons in the new creation?” It echoes this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’ verse 35 where Paul quotes some people as asking, “With what kind of body will [the dead] come [to life]?” Both questions suggest that Christians sometimes…
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Paul calls Jesus’ resurrection “of first importance.” Yet does it really matter whether Jesus rose, in John Updike’s lyrical words, “as His body” (Seven Stanzas at Easter), or as Gerd Ludemann insisted in a 2012 debate, the Scripture’s accounts of it were just a “legend, not objective description”? Does it really make any difference whether…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
I am a child of the North American 60’s who grew up watching some Saturday morning cartoons. So I can hardly hear 1 Corinthians 15:10a without hearing Popeye’s, “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam. I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.” That might seem like a rather strange onramp to a consideration…
Psalm 16
Probably we misread Psalm 16, or at least its most famous verses about how our bodies will rest secure. We have all been to our share of funerals that lift out verses 9-11 and put a resurrection spin on them. And maybe as Christians exegeting the Old Testament there is something right about that. All…
Four Pages: The Incognito Christ: the Walking Partner
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him. Luke 24:30-31 Many of the risen Jesus’ friends to whom he appeared just didn’t know who he was. So at least initially the risen…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul tries to clear up some theological misunderstandings about the resurrection. Yet he insists that the Corinthians’ confusion about it isn’t just one among many problems that he’s already addressed. Lack of clarity about the resurrection isn’t like confusion about, for example, sexuality, food offered to idols and lawsuits that plague…
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…
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…
Romans 5:12-19
It’s always humbling for my wife and me to have a problem with our computer or cell phones. After all, we, on whom our sons depended for so many years, must now largely depend on them to help us. I’ll never be as technologically savvy as our thirty-something sons. Fleming Rutledge, who lent me some…
Luke 20:27-38
“And no one dared to ask him any more questions.” That must have come as a great relief to Jesus in that he had lately been pummeled with one tricky query after the next. Technically that line in verse 40 falls just outside the lection prescribed here, which ends in verse 38 (why it ends…
Psalm 30
A friend of mine, when noting life’s oft-difficult circumstances, likes to sound a hopeful note by saying, “Ah well, joy cometh in the morning.” Or at least joy may come in the morning but most of us know altogether too well that sometimes it doesn’t. Or the “morning” in question ends up being pretty far…
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Some biblical texts deal with rather ordinary things such stealing, eating and even caring for animals. Other texts, however, open readers’ eyes to far bigger issues. While Paul talks much about daily concerns early in his first letter to the Corinthians, he closes it by talking about bigger concerns. As Daniel J. Price to whose…
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
It may be a good thing that the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday comes up only about “once in a blue moon.” Its sections of 1 Corinthians 15 contain, after all, what N.T. Wright, to whose book, Paul for Everyone: I Corinthians, (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2003) I owe great deal…
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Few things are sadder than the sight of people who place their hopes in something that can’t deliver that for which they hope. Think, for example, about the sad specter of people lined up to buy lottery tickets, pinning their hopes for wealth on a generally worthless piece of paper. Or think about terminally ill…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
In the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday Paul describes his theology of the resurrection. Yet he insists that the Corinthians’ confusion about it isn’t just one among many problems that he’s already addressed. Lack of clarity about the resurrection isn’t like confusion about, for example, sexuality, food offered to idols and lawsuits…
Genesis 32:22-31
God graciously meets and accepts God’s adopted sons and daughters wherever and whoever we are. But God never just leaves us where we are. That’s no less true of God’s 21st century adopted daughters and sons than it is of Jacob. The first time God meets Jacob, he’s fleeing both his homeland and his twin’s…
Psalm 30
Easter and Eastertide have now passed this calendar year and yet in the Sundays after Pentecost the Lectionary provides us with some wonderful poetry to help us continue living into and celebrating Easter. With its imagery of death and resurrection, Psalm 30 is a perfect post-Easter Psalm. Its purpose is to keep the memory of…
Luke 7:11-17
The incident in Nain recorded in Luke 7:11-17 is like one of many gospel snapshots we find in the four gospels. At the end of the fourth gospel, the Evangelist John flatly stated that Jesus did far more than anyone had ever written down. It seems that sometimes the evangelists threw in this or that…
John 12:1-8
In Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of the characters keeps saying over and over to the character of Big Daddy that you can just smell “the mendacity in the air.” This was a play with many layers of deception and lying and it became so very nearly palpable to some…
Preaching Connection: Resurrection