Dear Partner in Preaching, I’m going to take a brief hiatus over the next five weeks as we traverse the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John. The last time I took a break from writing this weekly column was six years ago and at the time I wrote a column at Working Preacher suggesting a sermon series on the Bread of Life passages and offering a few thoughts and a question each week to help with that, which is linked here. I’ll also put links to the letters I wrote to you on these texts in this space three years ago. While I don’t like offering up previous work, I will admit – which is not easy for me to do – that I...

John 6:1-21 Dear Partner in Preaching, For the next few weeks, as you undoubtedly know all too well, we are taking a break from Mark’s Gospel and foraying back into John. “Back” because of the amount of time we spent in John’s narrative in Lent and Easter. But now rather than jumping hither and yon through John’s story of Jesus, we’ll immerse ourselves for five weeks in just one chapter. A chapter rife with significance in John’s Gospel and in our own understanding of the sacraments. So rather than wonder how or why the lectionary makes this jump – a constant temptation for me, I must admit! – I’m simply going to suggest...