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“Blow out the candles,” declared the old evangelist, “the sun is up!” How Will He Govern? Christmas Day may be the only worship many people attend, and reading all twenty verses of “The Christmas Gospel” (...)

Isaiah 62:6-12 is the first reading assigned for Christmas Day. Like the Isaiah 9:2-7 reading assigned for Christmas Eve, the commentaries, appropriately, see little connection between this particular proclamation of salvation and the birth of (...)

The first two chapters of Luke include some of the most beautiful poetry in scripture, expressing the presence of God in the lives of the faithful of Israel. Following our text for the Fourth Sunday (...)

This pericope is simultaneously rooted in the rich memories of God’s saving acts and mired in the muck of dashed expectations and the experience of God’s absence. From this spot the prophet, speaking on behalf (...)

Mark 13:1-37 is set exactly in the middle of the passion narrative in the gospel of Mark. The overall theme for these five chapters (11:1-15:47) could be entitled: Jesus reveals the temple of his body (...)

The “kingship” of Christ is problematic for some of us today because of its male and hierarchical overtones. Christ the King Sunday first emerged, as I understand it, as an attempt to counter the outlandish (...)

Luminous promises radiate from this passage in Ezekiel. Only here in this otherwise alarming book is God a nurturing Shepherd who rescues and heals God’s people. The preacher may be tempted to treat these lyrical (...)

The setting for the gospel text for Pentecost 22, November 1 (also All Saints Day), within the gospel of Mark is crucial to understanding of Mark 12:28-34. The teaching of Jesus in Jerusalem is confrontational. (...)

How can this text from Hebrews, an obscure writing in thought and language, compete with the gospel for this Sunday on Jesus’ healing of blind Bartimaeus, the one who follows Jesus “on the way” of (...)

This passage plays a key role in the Gospel according to Mark’s understanding of why Jesus dies and what his death means. It describes the Christian gospel and the community it creates as utterly different (...)