John 15:1-8 Dear Partner in Preaching, I will confess right up front that I find preaching from the Farewell Discourses (John 14-16) seriously challenging. The combination of significant metaphor; a palpable sense of, but nevertheless elusive, original context; and strange mixture of promise, exhortation, and warning have always prompted me to walk – and preach – gingerly when tarrying in this particular portion of John’s Gospel. It feels like the Fourth Evangelist was writing to a community in pain, struggling with their identity in relation to former friends and synagogue members and a host of losses and fears that are...

John 15:1-8 Dear Partner in Preaching, “As I abide in you.” That’s the line in this week’s Gospel reading that helps me find a way to preach this passage. Without it, much of what Jesus says feels like a threat. You know what I mean? Abide in me or else – be pruned, wither, be thrown into the fire, and die! All voiced as a threat to bully people into staying loyal and faithful. But Jesus doesn’t just say “Abide in me.” Rather, he says, “Abide in me, as I abide in you.” And that changes everything. The other statements about pruning and withering and the rest are not threats of intimidation but rather statements of fact,...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Anyone else feeling rather pruned of late? Don’t get me wrong. I lead a blessed life with a wonderful family and job and friends, for all of which I am profoundly grateful. And yet… And yet there was another devastating earthquake, this time in Nepal, with so many dead and so many more left in dire circumstances. And we just passed the one-anniversary of the kidnapping of all those school girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram. And the 2016 – yes, 2016! – election campaign is already beginning and negative statements and ads are already flowing. And I heard from several friends recently who are dealing with pretty...