Luke 22:14-23:56 Dear Partner in Preaching, Sometimes when you read a familiar passage, you wonder just what you’ll preach on this time, and sometimes – and oh, how nice it is when this happens! – sometimes something entirely new jumps out at you. That’s what happened to me this week at the prompting of one of the readers of this column. Earlier this week, one of you wrote to me and observed that in Luke’s version of the Passion, Peter denies Jesus three times and Pilate proclaims his innocence three times. The preacher writing asked if this was significant. And, to tell you the truth, I’d never noticed that before....

Mark 11:1-11 Mark 15:6-15 Philippians 2:1-11 Dear Partner in Preaching, I am struck by both the cry and confusion of the crowd who witnesses and participates in Jesus’ triumphal entry. “Hosanna,” they cry: “Save us.” Or, depending on how you interpret it, as a cry of anticipation or a cry of adoration, perhaps, “Savior.” In either case, this single word captures the hopes, pleas, dreams, needs, and expectations of a crowd of people who were worn out by occupation, by feeling like strangers in their own land, and who had little day-to-day hope of improving their life or lot. And so they turn to Jesus. I don’t know how many of...

Matthew 21:1-11 Matthew 27:11-54 (shorter reading of the Passion) Dear Partner in Preaching, As you well know, Palm/Passion Sunday is one of the more cluttered and confusing liturgical days of the church year. When most of us were growing up, it was simply Palm Sunday, and the invitation to march around the sanctuary with palms in hand made it probably my favorite Sunday of the year as a kid. Sometime in the 80s or 90s – earlier, no doubt, in Roman Catholic circles where most of the important liturgical renewal began, but it took longer to seep into the liturgically middle-of-the-road Lutheran congregations in which I grew up – it was...

Luke 22:14-23:46 Dear Partner in Preaching, The biblical passage assigned for this week can be overwhelming, I know, as it covers so much narrative and emotional terrain. Indeed, this whole week of services and readings and prayers and more can be overwhelming. Known as “Holy Week,” the days leading to Easter might also be called, particularly by preachers, “hectic week”! In the midst of the both the holy atmosphere and hectic pace, I have one piece of advice: say just one thing. Part of that counsel relates directly to the reading before us. Rather than try to preach the broad sweep of Luke’s passion narrative, choose one element...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to imagine a future all that different from the past? We somehow get stuck in patterns of behavior and eventually come to believe that our past performance isn’t simply a predictor of our future behavior but rather its guarantee. And so the older we grow the less open the future seems and more ominous the past looms in our lives. The key to all of this, recent psychological research tells us, is story. Because the past isn’t simply the past, it’s the interpreted past. The past, in short, is the story we’ve told ourselves about the past. Which is why two siblings can...