Dear Partner in Preaching, While reading this passage, I kept thinking of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” and, in particular, it’s most famous line: “Good walls make good neighbors.” While that line is perhaps well known to many of us, it’s easy to forget that the whole of Frost’s poem is written to challenge that assertion. Two farmers are out for their spring ritual of replacing stones that have fallen from the wall separating their two properties. One, the voice of the poet, keeps wondering why they need walls at all: “My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.” To which...

Luke 4:14-21 Dear Partner in Preaching, When you hear the word “power,” what comes to mind? Significant influence or wealth, as in one who strides down the “corridors of power”? Or perhaps great physical strength, the powerful front line of the Carolina Panthers, for instance? I was struck by the line introducing the passage we’re reading this week: “Then Jesus, filled by the power of the Holy Spirit,….” According to Luke, Jesus does what he does and says what he says precisely because he is filled with power, great power, the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the first scene Luke offers to describe Jesus’ public ministry...

Dear Partner in Preaching, The first line of this week’s reading really grabbed my attention: “As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John….” What I find fascinating is not actually how John responding to all this attention; rather, I’m intrigued by the wondering and perhaps murmuring and even hoping among the people about whether John might be the promised Messiah in the first place. And that got me to thinking: “Are our people still expecting a Messiah?” Or, perhaps more accurately, “Who are our people looking to with...