Luke 4:14-30 Dear Partner in Preaching, Okay, I actually started this Sunday evening and it’s coming through in drips and drabs. That tells me, among other things, it will be a little longer than usual. 🙂 So maybe diving it up a bit will help. First, when working with this passage three years ago, I referenced Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall.” At the time, the poet’s confession, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” helped me give voice to what I heard as Jesus’ proclamation that God has come to save all, even those we fear or despise, and that, in order to extend God’s love to all, God will not...

Dear Partner in Preaching, While reading this passage, I kept thinking of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” and, in particular, it’s most famous line: “Good walls make good neighbors.” While that line is perhaps well known to many of us, it’s easy to forget that the whole of Frost’s poem is written to challenge that assertion. Two farmers are out for their spring ritual of replacing stones that have fallen from the wall separating their two properties. One, the voice of the poet, keeps wondering why they need walls at all: “My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.” To which...