Dear Partner in Preaching, I’m going to take a brief hiatus over the next five weeks as we traverse the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John. The last time I took a break from writing this weekly column was six years ago and at the time I wrote a column at Working Preacher suggesting a sermon series on the Bread of Life passages and offering a few thoughts and a question each week to help with that, which is linked here. I’ll also put links to the letters I wrote to you on these texts in this space three years ago. While I don’t like offering up previous work, I will admit – which is not easy for me to do – that I...

John 6:51-58 Dear Partner, I’ll confess that there are times as I read the upcoming texts and prepare this letter to you that I am temtped to think – as, I imagine, many people (and perhaps some in our pews) think – that the Bible has precious little to do with real life. This week was one of those weeks. I mean, here we are, stuck in the middle of this argument between Jesus and the crowd who was following him about bread from heaven and Jesus’ nearly unintelligible and rather grotesque assertions about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Biblical scholars, I realize, can show that behind these verses a controversy rages...

John 6:24-35 Dear Partner in Preaching, How do you feel about surprises? I’ll be honest: I’m not wild about them. In fact, I’ve always been a bit leery of people who love surprises. Call me dull, but, for the most part, I like the predictable, the planned, the ordered. For surprises, good or bad, have this way of upsetting plans and catching you off guard, of making you feel all unsettled and unprepared and insecure. Now, don’t get me wrong, surprises in some areas of life are fine, even fun; but I still get rather nervous around people who love to surprise other people. Now, I know, I know, most people are well-intentioned when they...