Luke 18:9-14 Dear Partner in Preaching, I’ll start first with an assertion and then with a question. The assertion: Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector is a far better passage for Reformation Sunday, IMHO of course, than the Gospel normally appointed for the day. So whether you are preaching the passages for Pentecost 20 or Reformation Day, I hope this is helpful. And now the question: Do you know the name Essena O’Neil? By the time Essena, a native of Australia, was eighteen, she had more than 200,000 followers on YouTube and a half million on Instagram. And then she quit. She vacated the social...

Luke 19:1-10 Dear Partner in Preaching, Many of you may be preaching this Sunday as Reformation Sunday. Others will preach it as the 24th Sunday after Pentecost. Whichever “day” you may be observing, I’d like to suggest there is a common theme worth holding up, and that is that the God we encounter in Jesus is not the God we expect – and that’s a good thing! I’ll start with the Zacchaeus story appointed for Pentecost 24. I have long felt that we misinterpret this story as a repentance story. That is, we read the events as follows: Jesus seeks out Zacchaeus, a notorious chief tax collector; Zacchaeus, overwhelmed by the...

Luke 18:9-14 Dear Partner in Preaching, What sets the two men described in today’s reading apart? There are a variety of ways of answering this question. On the surface, we might observe that one of them is part of the religious establishment while the other is an outsider. Or we might notice that one is law-abiding while the other is not. (And here it’s important to acknowledge that the Pharisee isn’t boasting so much as he is simply describing accurately that he has done those things the law prescribes as proper.) Going a little deeper, we might similarly recognize that one prays from a sense of confidence while the other from...