Matthew 22:34-46John 8:31-36Romans 3:19-28 Dear Partner in Preaching, Depending on what day you choose to lift up this Sunday, you have a variety of passages from which to choose. If you’re preaching Sunday as the 21st Sunday after Pentecost (A), you have Matthew’s story of Jesus’ famous declaration that “love the Lord your God” and “love your neighbor” are the chief commandments of Scripture (Mt 22). If you’re observing Reformation Sunday, you have Jesus connection between truth and freedom (Jn 8) and Paul’s lynch-pin discussion of righteousness (Rom 3). So many interesting, intriguing, and at some points...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Serious question: Did Jefferson miss the boat? Thomas Jefferson, that is. And I should admit right up front that I am a huge Jefferson fan. But as much as I like the poetic cadence of the Declaration of Independence’s inalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” I’ve always wondered if Jefferson unintentionally set us on the wrong direction from the start. (And – just to be clear – this isn’t the usual Christian comparison between happiness and joy, with the inevitable triumph of lasting joy over fleeting happiness. Maybe there’s something to that comparison, but I think...

Just a quick thought for the day. Or really a question: Do you think happiness is a worthy goal? Or is it rather a by-product of other things? Ever since Thomas Jefferson, at least, we have been taught to think happiness is something we should pursue. But, I wonder, what is happiness, exactly? When do we know we’ve found it? How do we go about it? Noting that we are notoriously bad at predicting what will make us happy, it occurs to me that perhaps that’s because happiness isn’t, finally, something you can pursue and catch and possess. Rather, perhaps happiness is the by-product of worthy activities. Perhaps happiness is...

Believe it or not, this is a more complicated question than one might imagine. On the one hand, those who argue against the proposition point to several key pieces of evidence. First, many if not most of the Founders of the country cannot be described accurately as Christians but as Deists, persons who believe that a benevolent Creator set the world in motion but no longer intervenes in it. Indeed, Washington would never publicly admit to being a Christian and Jefferson was regularly accused of being hostile to Christianity and famously took his scissors to the Bible to cut out any incidences of divine interaction. Further, the United States...