Luke 8:26-39 Dear Partner in Preaching My apologies for the long “radio-silence.” While Holy Week and Easter are often the crunch times in ministry, followed by a bit of a respite, that has not been my experience this year. Board meetings and trips and baptisms and funerals and graduations all the things that make up congregational life have kept me running and made it very challenging to write… even late into the week. And I’m not sure when or if that will change, so I will continue to write when I’m able, but simply can’t promise that my reflections will be as regular as before. None of this, I want to be clear, should...

Dear Partner in Preaching, There is so much we don’t know about the story told in this week’s passage: We don’t know how this Roman centurion heard about Jesus. We don’t know anything about his military career, what wars he had perhaps waged, what battles fought. We don’t know why he changed his mind after first asking Jesus to come to him and then sending servants telling Jesus he didn’t need to come but only to speak the word of healing. We don’t know why he cared so deeply about this slave. We don’t know if the slave was Jewish and that perhaps played upon the sympathy of the Jewish elders or Jesus. We don’t know what...