Matthew 22:1-14 Dear Partner in Preaching, This may just be my least favorite parable in my least favorite Gospel. (And before you say anything, I know a good working preacher doesn’t play favorites. Well, maybe when it comes to parables, but not Gospels.) Regardless, this parable seems just plain nasty. Not so much because it’s difficult to interpret – it is, to some degree, though mostly, I think, because we don’t like what it says. But rather because of the indiscriminate violence in the passage. What are we to make of it? To get at that question, I’m going to try to summarize what seem to me to be the three main...

Matthew 21:33-46 Dear Partner in Preaching, I think I know what Matthew’s up to here and, quite frankly, I’m not a fan. This parable, quite similar to that in Mark and Luke, has one major and one minor difference from its sibling accounts. First, the major: after telling the story of violent tenant farmers who not only refuse to give the landowner the portion of the produce lawfully owed, all three synoptic gospels portray Jesus as asking a question: “what will the landowner do to those tenants?” But whereas Mark and Luke depict Jesus as answering his own question – “he will destroy those tenants and give the land to...

Matthew 18:15-20 Dear Partner in Preaching, I must confess that I think I’ve been misreading this Sunday’s passage from Matthew for, well, pretty much my whole life. J That’s likely because – another confession coming – I tend to read Matthew as a fairly strict rule enforcer, a little harsh a times, even bordering on nasty occasionally. (Told you I was about to ‘fess up!) But… I think I’ve got it – and Matthew – all wrong. (Well, not all wrong, as Matthew can be kind of harsh, particularly when dealing with the Pharisees, his likely opponents in the struggle for the allegiance of his folks.)...

Matthew 5:1-12 Dear Partner in Preaching, There is a scene in Schindler’s List that came back to me while reading the Beatitudes. Amon Goeth, played by Ralph Fiennes, is the commandant of a German death camp. Goeth is, in brief, a violent sociopath, prone to kill the Jewish prisoners at his camp indiscriminately. And he believes that his ability to kill is the very essence of power. Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, is a consummate showman and has somehow worked his way into Amon Goeth’s good graces. One evening, Schindler challenges Goeth’s beliefs about power. The ability to kill isn’t power; the ability to have mercy is...

Matthew 18:15-20 Dear Partner in Preaching, So what do you think? Rules or relationships? I think this may be the central question to answer in our reading and preaching of this particular passage in Matthew. Is he giving us rules to live by or privileging relationships over, well, just about everything else in our life as Christians. If the former, then you have a rather neat little formula for maintaining a semblance of order in the Christian community. Someone offends you, confront them. If that doesn’t work, try an intervention. If that fails, cut them off and kick them out. If nothing else, it’s at least straight forward, which is...