Luke 24:13-35 Dear Partner in Preaching, How are you doing? It’s been six or seven weeks now of doing ministry we didn’t expect and weren’t trained for, and that’s hard. In the few spare minutes between overseeing things in my own shop, I occasionally visit other congregations via the web and have been so encouraged by all that you are doing and trying. What I see regularly is creativity and resiliency and faithfulness that swells my heart with gratitude. Thank you. As we look at this week’s passage, I’m struck that there is also a fair amount of creativity, resiliency, and faithfulness on display as well. Luke,...

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 6:56-69 Dear Partner in Preaching, Aren’t there moments – maybe many! – when you want to say just what “many of his disciples” said: “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” Once again, it is as easier for me to identify with the crowds who misunderstand and question Jesus than with Jesus himself. Because what Jesus has been saying, and what we have heard these past four weeks, is indeed hard to listen to and hard to understand. That Jesus is the bread of life? That he provides the only food which truly nourishes? That he gives us his own self, even his own flesh and blood, to sustain us on our journey? These are...

John 6:51-58 Dear Partner, I’ll confess that there are times as I read the upcoming texts and prepare this letter to you that I am temtped to think – as, I imagine, many people (and perhaps some in our pews) think – that the Bible has precious little to do with real life. This week was one of those weeks. I mean, here we are, stuck in the middle of this argument between Jesus and the crowd who was following him about bread from heaven and Jesus’ nearly unintelligible and rather grotesque assertions about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Biblical scholars, I realize, can show that behind these verses a controversy rages...

John 6:35, 41-51 Dear Partner in Preaching, Once again I find that the crowd who follows Jesus speaks for us, or at least for me. St. John narrates that these people who have followed Jesus, regarded him as a teacher, and witnessed his miracles, also know him as one of their own. That is, they knew his parents and his brothers and sisters, they watched him play and learn his trade, grow up and eventually leave home. In other words, they know him, just like they know all the kids from their old neighborhood. And for this reason, you see – because he is just like them, because he is common –he can’t be all that special, and he...