19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A, RCL)

People assume that silence and peace can be simply harnessed together, silence as Xanax for the soul. But that's not how deserts work.

This Sunday's passage from Paul's letter to the Christians in Rome seems to be an example of Year C's theological focus on those who are living in a state of alienation from Jesus Christ and the church. Yet when I think about rebuilding the bridges of love, trust, and belonging in contemporary Christian community, Paul isn't the first person who comes to mind.

Sacramentality is the breath of Christian life—life that springs from the sacraments and life that yearns to return to them.

Hagar’s story has often been read as if it explains some inevitable animosity among the Abrahamic faiths. We should try reading it differently.

It's an old saw: When Protestants say “the Bible” they mean the New Testament, when they say “the New Testament” they mean Paul, and when they say “Paul” they mean Romans. I was looking forward to this opportunity to write Living By the Word. Then I received the specific Sundays I was assigned, and I confess I rolled my eyes a little. I could be yet another Presbyterian to write on Romans!

I went with Romans anyway.

Our age is tremendously excited about the visual. Yet here is Paul, firm in the conviction that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."

These Gospel stories can seem so familiar. But sit with the disciples in the little wooden boat, and Jesus' power will render you speechless.

When the angel of the Lord told Elijah to go to Mount Horeb, Elijah knew he would encounter God. After all, Horeb was where God spoke to Moses with fire and to Israel with a storm. But for Elijah, God didn’t show up as expected. 

This week’s readings are generally about the faithful. Deuteronomy describes God’s faithful care of a “wandering Aramean” or “Syrian about to perish”—most likely Jacob. The psalm echoes God’s faithful care of God’s own, safely abiding in the shadow of the Almighty. Paul reminds the Romans how uncomplicated it is to come by salvation: it only takes faithful hearts and faithful speech. And we see Jesus’ profound faithfulness as he survives the devil’s temptations in the wilderness.

Preaching these texts looks easy enough, maybe even uninspiring. It doesn’t get much more basic than faith.

Where Moses reassured his listeners with the word when, the devil tempts Jesus with the word if.

The lectionary reading from Matthew's Gospel is the story of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee in the midst of a storm. In a couple of decades, anyone will be able to cross the Sea of Galilee on foot because of climate change.

I am writing a sermon on Matthew 14: 22-33, the passage wherein Jesus invites Peter to get out of the boat and walk on the water with him…in the midst of a storm.  Peter has always seemed to me to be the naïve, overeager, overachiever type.