John 9:1-41 Dear Partner in Preaching, A single brief question late in the week: Why do we call the main character in this story “the man born blind” or “the man who had been blind”? Maybe you don’t call it that, but that’s the way I’ve normally heard it. And I’m curious as to why. The obvious reason, I suppose, is that this is the way the Gospel of John refers to him. At least some of the time. In the first verse of John’s ninth chapter, he is described as a “man blind from birth.” Okay, that pretty descriptively accurate. Once Jesus heals him, he is referred to directly several more times. In v. 8, he is “the man...

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...