Dear Partner in Preaching, There is so much we don’t know about the story told in this week’s passage: We don’t know how this Roman centurion heard about Jesus. We don’t know anything about his military career, what wars he had perhaps waged, what battles fought. We don’t know why he changed his mind after first asking Jesus to come to him and then sending servants telling Jesus he didn’t need to come but only to speak the word of healing. We don’t know why he cared so deeply about this slave. We don’t know if the slave was Jewish and that perhaps played upon the sympathy of the Jewish elders or Jesus. We don’t know what...

Two Bible Story Jams up this week. The first follows the Narrative Lectionary with a reading about Jesus healing the centurion’s slave (Luke 7:1-17) and uses some of the original folks from our first BSJ event in early December. The second is brought to you by some of the confirmation students at Bethlehem Lutheran Church. They’re talking about a story we sometimes hear in Lent, of when Jesus heals a “sinful” woman while dining with a Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50). Listen as the kids imagine the reaction of Jesus and others as she bathes Jesus’ feet with tears and washes them with her hair. Okay, listen to the kids as...