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The man healed in this story is perhaps the least willing and the least grateful of all the people Jesus heals in John’s Gospel. The setting of the healing is a pool called Bethzatha near (...)

John 17 brings us to the end of Jesus’ farewell to his disciples. The timing is a bit confusing to listeners. We celebrated Easter at the end of March, but the last few weeks we’ve (...)

As Biblical scholar, I have a love-hate relationship with the lectionary. Its power, it seems to me, resides in the fact that we don’t get to cherry-pick the texts we want to read in liturgy. (...)

Many Advent wreaths feature a pink candle for the Third Sunday of Advent — and it’s called “the Mary candle.” The lectionary even offers her song, the Magnificat, as an alternative to the Psalm reading (...)

This Passover text is appointed for Maundy Thursday each year.1 According to the Synoptic Gospels, it is on Thursday evening that Jesus, in the upper room with his disciples, celebrates Passover and institutes the Lord’s (...)

The narrative begins with the picture of a garden where Jesus will be betrayed and it concludes in a garden, where Jesus will be buried. In between, readers witness Jesus’ trial, Peter’s denial, Jesus’ last (...)

John 20 tells us that Jesus appeared to some of his most important disciples “on the first day of the week.” First of all, to Mary Magdalene (20:11-18). Commissioning her as the Apostle to the (...)

Godliness and good works are probably not the topics that most preachers would choose for a Christmas sermon. Yet, an exhortation to these is what the Second Lesson from Titus 2:11–14 gives us in part, (...)

The opening weeks of the new year and the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday are the temporal context in the culture for the account of Jesus’ coming to Galilee, preaching the good news of God (...)

As with nearly every passage in the gospel of John, this reading uses simple vocabulary that is filled with theological content. The words “see,” “hour,” “glorify,” and the reference to being “lifted up” renew the (...)