John 12:20-33 Dear Partner in Preaching, I’ll just confess it: I’ve never known quite what to do with this passage. It is, like so many passages in the Fourth Gospel, so symbolically and theologically rich (or, if you’re feeling as I am right now, dense). One thing I do notice however, is a series of interesting inversions. The scene starts with some Greeks wanting to see Jesus. Just what the Greeks represent is not entirely clear, but I tend to think it means that word of Jesus, and simultaneously Jesus’ word of grace, has reached far and wide enough for him to feel confident that this part of his mission is complete and he can now...

Dear Partner in Preaching, If there was ever a text for the “spiritual but not religious” crowd, this may be it. Before jumping into John, however, perhaps a word or two on SBNR is in order. In general, we use this term rather broadly to indicate variously those who no longer affiliate with religion, the “nones” who seem open to spirituality defined broadly, and those who actually checked the SBNR box on a survey. Which means that SNBR can mean almost anything, and at times seems to encompass a little bit of everything. So here’s how I think of it: SBNR denotes those folks who are indeed open to a sense of mystery, curious about...