Luke 9:51-62 Dear Partner in Preaching, As is true of all texts, there are any number of interpretive directions in which you can go this week. Having said that, however, one simply jumped off the page for me and demanded my attention: why is it that when the James and John meet resistance to Jesus’ mission, their first instinct is to call down fire from heaven that will consume those they see as opponents? Let’s set the scene for a moment before trying to answer this question. Chapter nine is a pivotal chapter in Luke’s story about Jesus. It is, in a variety of ways, the hinge of the story, as it provides the pivot point between...

Luke 8:26-39 Dear Partner in Preaching, When I’ve written on this passage in years past, I’ve focused on the power of names. It regularly breaks my heart, for instance, to hear this young man respond to Jesus query, “What is your name?” by answering, “Legion.” He has defined himself, I’ve argued, by his deficits, by his ailment, by his pain, by his struggles and captivity. I’ve contrasted this shrunken, broken reality with the life-restoring gift of a new name and identity in Holy Baptism. I am still struck by this reality and, indeed, think it still preaches. J But this year I was taken not so much by what Jesus said to this...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Take it from me, it’s all about forgiveness. Now, I don’t know if I’d start there, but it’s definitely where I want to end up. Where would I start? Probably with how much I don’t like Simon. Come on, be honest – don’t you agree? He’s kind of a punk. Arrogant, judgmental, self-righteous, he looks down on everyone else and is scornful of both this woman because of her reputation and Jesus for not treating her with the disdain Simon believes she deserves. And I wonder if that’s the point. Luke crafts this story with great care, even sharing Simon’s muttering thoughts to himself. And the punch line...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Hey – I know it hardly helps to get these reflections so late in the week. And I apologize. My work at LTSP, and particularly our efforts to unify the Philadelphia and Gettysburg seminaries, has been pretty much all consuming of late and it’s getting harder to find time to write. Again, my apologies. I’ll try to do better. In the meantime, I’ll keep this week’s reflection relatively short. So….what strikes me most about this story is not the miracle itself. This is Jesus we’re talking about after all. But rather the reaction of the crowds. Luke tells us that after Jesus gave life back to the widow’s...

Dear Partner in Preaching, There is so much we don’t know about the story told in this week’s passage: We don’t know how this Roman centurion heard about Jesus. We don’t know anything about his military career, what wars he had perhaps waged, what battles fought. We don’t know why he changed his mind after first asking Jesus to come to him and then sending servants telling Jesus he didn’t need to come but only to speak the word of healing. We don’t know why he cared so deeply about this slave. We don’t know if the slave was Jewish and that perhaps played upon the sympathy of the Jewish elders or Jesus. We don’t know what...

Dear Partner in Preaching, So what do you think: is it possible to preach a sermon on the Trinity without mentioning the Trinity? I ask because I have this hunch that we’ve gotten a little off track with our thinking about the Trinity. That is, I think the Trinity was the early church’s way of trying to grapple with a monotheistic belief in one God in light of their actual, lived experience of God’s activity powerfully in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and after an encounter with the power of the Holy Spirit. And the Trinity provided an answer…of sorts. An answer often couched in the language of fourth-century metaphysics....