lectionary

The greatest Christmas carol in history was not written by Irving Berlin or Nat King Cole. The greatest carol is not “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” or “White Christmas” or even “Silent Night.” The greatest carol was composed 2,000 years ago by a pregnant teenage girl who was visiting her cousin Elizabeth.

“Are you scribes gone awry?” Jesus asks us. “Have you got good religion?”

This Hebrews text is a word crafted for a specific people by a caring preacher.

We see in Bartimaeus's story the same basic elements that are present in the calling of Jesus’ first disciples.

People who are satisfied and content do not seek Jesus—only those who know there is something missing from their lives.

The first disciples experienced Jesus’ resurrection not as some single triumphant fait accompli, but by fits and starts.

This is no voluntary association, no transactional contract. The sheep do not earn the shepherd or elect him.

The disciples are afraid, so they lock their doors. I do the same.

When I was a child, I loved Palm Sunday because we got to act out the biblical version of a ticker-tape parade. Later I learned of the ephemeral quality of stardom and parades and decided that Palm Sunday and Passion Week belong together. As a pastor, I have accepted the dismal fact that most of our people skip Thursday, Friday and Saturday, slipping from parade pandemonium to Easter ecstasy with none of the suffering and pain.

Psalm 51 does not let any of us off the hook—not the progressives, the evangelicals, or the feel-good agnostics.

Look, people are sinking under the waters. Here in this wilderness, people are perishing.

In the synoptic accounts of the cleansing of the temple, Jesus is being provocative. In John, he is provoked.

For the people in Noah’s day, there was no scientific warning of a natural disaster, just a crazy man building an ark.

Jesus and Peter care about each other enough to call each other out.