John 20:1-18 Dear Partner in Preaching, I know this is your busy week, our busy week, and rather than close with a word of gratitude, I want to start there. So many people will come to hear a word of hope and healing this Sunday. So many will come not knowing what they need to hear, just that they need to be there. So many will come not even aware of their need, perhaps coming out of habit, or to please another family member, or just because it’s Easter. And you will greet all of them the same, proclaim the good news to each as if the only thing that matters is that they are there to hear God’s good news of resurrection, healing,...

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...

Dear Partner in Preaching, So what do you think: is it possible to preach a sermon on the Trinity without mentioning the Trinity? I ask because I have this hunch that we’ve gotten a little off track with our thinking about the Trinity. That is, I think the Trinity was the early church’s way of trying to grapple with a monotheistic belief in one God in light of their actual, lived experience of God’s activity powerfully in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and after an encounter with the power of the Holy Spirit. And the Trinity provided an answer…of sorts. An answer often couched in the language of fourth-century metaphysics....