One of the routine parts of Sunday worship for many of us saying the Apostles’ Creed. But perhaps because it’s routine for many it’s also become rote, something we say without much thought and which, for that reason, routinely fails to touch us. The other challenge of the Creed is that when we say it in this way, we tend to slide toward thinking of it as a laundry list of things you have to believe (“believe” here in the sense of cognitive assent) rather than allow it to draw us into a community of people gathered around a confession of faith about what God was and is doing through Jesus for us and the...

In this week’s column I write for Working Preacher I suggest that the simple parable of the mustard seed – which is the gospel reading for this Sunday – is not so much a cute maxim or fable about great things having modest beginnings, which is the way I usually hear it preached. Rather, and as I talked about in a recent Daily Bread devotion, I think it’s a warning that the kingdom of God, once it takes root, will spread like an unruly weed (which is what mustard was considered in the ancient world). Of course it’s only a warning to those who are satisfied with the status quo, those who benefit from the way the...

In the gospel reading appointed for this Sunday, Jesus is accused of being demon-possessed. In an article I wrote on that passage, I wondered whether the gospel always sounds a little crazy to those who first hear it…or maybe just to those who take it seriously. That is, the more seriously you take the gospel, the more crazy, or outlandish, or impossible, or even possessed, it sounds. And I kind of think that’s the way it has to be simply because what’s sane, normal, everyday, and expected doesn’t, I think, have the power to transform us, let alone save us. By way of illustration: near the beginning of his lengthy...

It’s Holy Week, and so are thoughts are naturally drawn to Jesus’ cross and resurrection. We will listen to scenes from the Passion of our Lord read in church and meditate on our Lord’s suffering and all that it means for us. And on Sunday we will gather to hear, like the first disciples, the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. Gathered together we will pray and sing and give thanks for all this means for us and, indeed, for the world. This is, to borrow the old words, “meet, right and salutary,” for as the Apostle Paul writes, the confession of Jesus’ death and resurrection is “of first importance,” that is, stands at the...