Luke 15:1-10 Dear Partner in Preaching, It’s September, and your parish life, like mine, is probably full to overflowing with the start of a new program year, stewardship events, planning for the fall and winter, looking ahead to planning a budget and a mission rationale to accompany it, and more. It’s so easy to get caught up in all these important, even vital, activities of church leadership and, perhaps, to forget, or at least lose track of, the reason for all the work: to share the news that God loves us more than we can imagine. Fortunately, this week we have before us these unbelievably brief and evocative and beautiful...

Luke 12:32-40 Dear Partner in Preaching, It’s late in the week, and I’m again pressed for time, so I will offer just a few thoughts on this Sunday’s passage. First and foremost: Jesus’ words “Do not be afraid, little flock,” seem like a tall order just now. Global warming. Racial divides. Instability in governments around the globe. Trade wars and rumors of wars. Lots to fear, it would seem, made worse by the fact that there are lots of people eager to play upon our fears and lots of channels for them to do so through. And then come the commands: Sell your possessions. Give alms. Store your treasure in heaven. Be...

Luke 10:38-42 Dear Partner in Preaching, What if their names were Matt and Marty, rather than Mary and Martha? I’m talking, of course, about the two characters interacting with Jesus in this week’s Gospel reading. Because they are two women, and because they seem – at least momentarily – at odds with each other, and because Jesus appears to take a side, we have for centuries tried to read this story as about discipleship and yet somehow regularly made it about women’s roles. Women’s roles in the church, in leadership, in society, and beyond. Goodness, but the pull of this interpretation is so strong that it has escaped...

Luke 10:25-37 Dear Partner in Preaching, I’ll admit that this has never been my favorite parable (and that I feel no small measure of guilt about that). Maybe it’s because this is one of those passages that is so well known, so famous, everyone already thinks they know what it means and so it’s hard to find a fresh angle. Or maybe it’s the way this parable has leapt off the pages of the Bible and into popular culture – think of the laws after Princess Diana’s death or the final episode of Seinfeld referencing the same – which makes it a surprisingly complicated passage to preach. Or maybe it’s because it has...

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 Dear Partner in Preaching, Not too long ago, while preparing a sermon, I was reminded of linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin’s book How to Do Things With Words, where he expresses the conviction that you know the meaning of a word or sentence not by what it says (our usual assumption), but by why what it does, by what impact it has on you. For instance, imagine that I say, “The door is open.” Is that simply a statement of fact? Maybe. But what if you had just asked a question about why it was so warm inside even though the air-conditioning was on, and I said, “The door is open.” Then I’m not simply...