Wrestling with the Word

Fifth Sunday in Lent I confess. I am fascinated by the discoveries of science that help us understand the development of life and the rich variety of life on earth. I also celebrate the knowledge that every life form is the way it is because it needs to be the way it is! Yet I […]

Fourth Sunday in Lent No wonder we mortals have difficulty grasping the word of God and applying the divine address to our lives here and now. God does not fit any of the categories by which we manage our lives and the affairs of the world. The Bible makes no qualms about the differences between […]

Third Sunday in Lent We can all understand, I think, that when people of faith experience hardships in their own lives and observe the sufferings of others, they often lose their faith in the God they worshiped. Such a response is quite common among people during grief and trauma. It is more difficult to understand […]

Second Sunday in Lent Many stories tell about a journey. The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh Epic is about Gilgamesh’s long journey to attain immortality. Homer’s The Odyssey relates the trials and tribulations of Odysseus as he travels home from the Trojan battlefield. J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings dramatically relates the journey of Frodo and his […]

First Sunday in Lent As I was listening over the past few weeks to some lectures on music, I became particularly interested when the teacher waxed eloquently about Pythagoras, the 6th century B.C, philosopher, mathematician, and most everything else. Pythagoras and his disciples (the Pythagoreans) developed a theory of numbers, often in terms of the […]

The Transfiguration of Our Lord The Sunday celebrating the Transfiguration of Our Lord has been set in a particularly strategic position. In one sense, the Sunday is also the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. In another sense, it is the transition to Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season. Typical of the Epiphany season, the Transfiguration […]

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany The Epiphany season challenges us to discern the meaning of symbols in order to grasp the messages about the identity of Jesus. Removed by almost two thousand years, the biblical symbols that convey this powerful news are almost exclusively words. Word symbols relate meaning, however, only in particular contexts. For […]

Christmas Eve The birth of Jesus, and the way Luke and Matthew tell the birth stories, challenged much of the thinking of ancient times. The Christmas story, comforting and mysterious as it is, challenges us also—if we are willing to allow it. The challenge is primarily this. Thanks to worldwide influence of Plato’s philosophy, all […]

First Sunday of Advent, Year A Visionaries fascinate us. Many people stand in awe of the prophetic visions of Nostradamus to predict future events. More appropriately, we marvel at the visionary writings of Jules Verne who in the latter half of the 19th century wrote novels about traveling up into space and down to the […]

Christ the King Sunday As the season of Pentecost comes to an end, the entire church year concludes as well. How fitting that every church year ends with Christ the King Sunday. While the title for Jesus is not well attested in the New Testament, the announcement that the Reign of God has dawned in […]

Lectionary 33 Pentecost 25 I shudder when I think of how I contribute to our country’s consumer spending problem. We have become accustomed to spending on just about everything and to satisfying our needs for instant gratification. We know the problems for the economy that go with that habit we share. At times of personal […]

All Saints Sunday This particular Sunday offers many people comfort and hope, often while stimulating feelings of pain and sadness, even guilt and anger over the death of loved ones. Many churches continue the tradition of reading aloud the names of those who died since the last All Saints Sunday, and frankly, I find it […]

Reformation Sunday We celebrate the day because on this date, the Eve of All Saint’s Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. But what stands out for us, and what makes this day worth celebrating, is not the hammer and the nail in […]

Lectionary 30 (22 Pentecost) One of the last, if not indeed the final, message Martin Luther wrote in his deathbed was one of his most profound and succinct expressions of the gospel of Jesus Christ: “We are beggars, that is true.” As he lay dying, Luther anticipated what it would be like to stand before […]

Lectionary 29 (Pentecost 21) The title for this series of podcasts is “Wrestling with the Word.” Thanks to Google Alerts, I have learned that the expression occurs in many conversations regarding just about any issue in the world. In this series, however, the “word” is specifically God’s word. Here we wrestle with biblical texts as […]

Lectionary 28 (Pentecost 20) I can never understand why I periodically resent the teachings of the Bible. I suspect, though, that what bothers me is God’s generosity. You would think that God prefers people who are religiously connected, even properly religious people, like those of my own religion and denomination. But the Bible has a […]

Lectionary 27 Pentecost 19 There is a four-letter word that ruffles feathers, pumps up blood pressure, and causes arguments. It’s the word W-A-I-T. It seems like a complete waste of time to you and me and countless others. Yet God reiterates promises that are worth waiting for and calls us to make productive use of […]

Lectionary 26 (18 Pentecost) The summer vacations have come to their annual end, and so have the emails or phone calls from family and friends that so often include the words “Wish you were here!” On the one hand, the cliché makes me jealous of their experiences. On the other hand, precisely because they are […]

Lectionary 25 (17 Pentecost) I confess I become upset at some people’s lack of concern for others and at systems in the world that favor the rich and powerful. That anger presents quite a dilemma when I join others in expressing that God is the God of all people, that God loves everyone, and that […]

Lectionary 24 (16 Pentecost) When life takes its well-known detours that result in anguish of our souls, we sometimes stretch an accusing finger at God. Those unexpected turns seem at times to demonstrate that God is not faithful to promises—whether they were made or we imagine they were. We might find a biblical passage here […]

Lectionary 23 (15 Pentecost) Throughout the New Testament, Jesus proves to be a chip off the old block. Whatever God does in the Old Testament, Jesus does in the New. The names for God in the Hebrew Bible become the names the early church used also for Jesus. And when it comes to faithfulness or […]

Lectionary 22 (14 Pentecost) We spend a lot of time in church preaching and teaching about how to become better Christians. How does a good Christian act? Who are the role models for Christians? Good questions! Good issues to discuss. But for a moment, let’s not sweat the small stuff. Let us go for the […]

Lectionary 21 (13 Pentecost) Far from programming us to live our days as mindless robots, God gives us freedom to make choices. Those freedoms, the Bible tells us, force us to make responsible decisions about priorities for doing the will of God. Our lessons for this day challenge us to choose between two of God’s […]

Lectionary 20 (12 Pentecost) Our options for the day are either “Lectionary 20: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C,” or “Mary, the Mother of our Lord.” I have chosen to discuss the pericopes for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, because in previous episodes I had discussed some of the pericopes for Mary’s special day. If […]

Lectionary 19 (11 Pentecost) Around the world, people are participating in an internet treasure hunt called geocaching. My daughter, Dana, and her husband, Paul, have recently published a book about the phenomenon (The Joy of Geocaching). Their stories describe what the fuss is all about—what it has meant for people individually and in groups. Well […]

Lectionary 18 (10 Pentecost) Nothing, it seems, makes people more anxious than the daily gyrations in the stock market. The precipitous drops in the Dow Jones raise our insecurity levels over our pensions, our budgets, our present life-styles, and our well-strategized futures. All that is completely understandable for life in the world. The problem is […]

Lectionary 17 (9 Pentecost) Like Liza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, “I’m so sick of words,” especially my own, I admit. We hear thousands of words every day—words about the weather, the economy, the local and worldwide sports events, politics. We listen to words that range from brilliant to stupid. We stress over some words […]

Lectionary 16 (8 Pentecost) In ancient times, hospitality was the means by which people cared for one another. Lacking Holiday Inns and McDonalds, the people opened to hungry travelers their kitchens and the shelter of their roofs. The practice was both functional and honorable. In more modern times the concept has taken spiritual form, especially […]

Lectionary 15 (7 Pentecost) How easy it is for groups of believers to lose the theological foundations that defined them in the first place! Sometimes cultural influences so overwhelm the communities of believers that they have trouble sorting out the foundation from the later construction. Sometimes attempts to control others by appealing to their fears […]

Lectionary 14 (6 Pentecost) God’s generosity can cause problems among people. For one reason or another, some folks think they have a corner on the market of God’s love and grace. The problem is as commonplace today as it was in the days of the Bible. The Jonah-syndrome occurred again and again among the people […]

Lectionary 13 (5 Pentecost) While a general human tendency is to “look out for yourself,” the Bible focuses on the opposite: look out for others. The new direction is not simply an ethical issue. It actually derives from the nature of God. Throughout the Bible God demonstrates unconditional loyalty to people and to fulfilling promises. […]

Lectionary 12 (4 Pentecost) Literary critics define a tragedy as a story that ends with the major character excluded from his or her community. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, therefore, qualifies as a tragedy. The closing words describe the creature’s fate: “He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance. The End.” […]

Lectionary 11 (Third Sunday after Pentecost) Many of us have trouble with forgiveness. Sometimes the difficulty is granting forgiveness to someone who has deeply hurt, offended, or dishonored us. Sometimes the problem is with receiving forgiveness, either from another person or from God. The whole Bible, and indeed our lessons for the day make clear […]

Lectionary 10 (Second Sunday after Pentecost) In the chaotic and threatening times in which we live, some people long for the good old days when things were stable and peaceful. Some even say it was more obvious in those days that God was in heaven and all was right with the world. Strikingly, the biblical […]

Holy Trinity The church’s doctrine of the Holy Trinity is an intellectual puzzle. At the same time, it integrates for us the witnesses of God throughout the Scriptures. While any particular passage that we study, even the ones for today, might in themselves be puzzling, the whole testimony to God from Genesis 1 through Revelation […]

Day of Pentecost The human mind is a marvelous instrument. It helps us find our way in the world. It enables us to plan, to measure, to reflect, to calculate, and to take responsibility for ourselves and for others. Our minds can develop instruments to see so far out into space that we can look […]

Seventh Sunday of Easter In the musical Camelot, King Arthur tells Guinevere on the day of their meeting about his teacher Merlin. Arthur says, “He lives backwards… He can remember the future… He can tell you what is in it.” The Bible abounds in visions of the future. Those visions give us hope in difficult […]

Sixth Sunday of Easter Looking at the events that occur around us can give the impression that God is absent from the world. That impression provided the basis for apocalyptic literature in the Bible. When the world seemed hopeless and godless, then the people’s only hope was for the end, the promised reign of God. […]

Fifth Sunday of Easter Some people are big picture folks. Others focus on details. When we speak of God as a person (or three persons), how do we imagine God? Big picture? Details? The lessons for today enable us to see that God is both. God is so big that the whole universe owes its […]

Fourth Sunday of Easter We have finished the Lenten season four weeks ago. The suffering of Christ has ended, and since then we are still enjoying the celebration of his resurrection. But for us, suffering continues, as it did for the early disciples of Jesus. We still get ill and suffer accidents. We still know […]

Third Sunday of Easter The proverbial “they” say that misery loves company. “They” also say that you cannot keep good news to yourself. The Bible is filled with the latter. The good news of what God has done and is doing for us cries out for sharing with others. Our lessons for today take that […]

Second Sunday of Easter Imagine how difficult it would be to go back in time—to Jesus’ time. On the one hand, such time travel would demand that we give up the internet and our MP3 players, to say nothing of our planes, trains, and automobiles. Then, of course, we would also surrender our comfortable beds, […]

The Resurrection of Our Lord How do we talk about the Easter story and all that it means in one sermon? The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the foundation on which Christianity stands or falls. In our second lesson,1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul sums up the meaning of the resurrection: “If […]

Sunday of the Passion Palm Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion, begins the most holy week in the church year. It is a week marked by sadness, by suffering that is both physical and relational. Jesus walked willingly the path that most—if not all—of us walk at one time or another in our lives. Just […]

Fifth Sunday in Lent The biblical passages burst with God’s promises of salvation. Since such promises are never conditioned on human behavior, we can attribute those promised acts and God’s past acts to God’s amazing grace. The Bible also makes no secret about the praise God expects for such graciousness. The responsibility of the people […]

Fourth Sunday in Lent Let’s talk about God. What kind of God do we worship? That question is by no means frivolous. In fact, it is a matter of life and death, because the kind of God that we worship determines how we live our lives, how we face our deaths, and how we laugh […]

Third Sunday in Lent Like a loving parent, God is not only patient but unconditionally loyal to the children. Throughout the Bible, God teaches the people from infancy about love and kindness and faithfulness. God extends arms of welcome and showers forgiveness, even through teenage rebellions. The point comes, however, when God expects the kids […]

Second Sunday in Lent It might seem to us that God’s promises are simply an illusion. The daily experience of life often stands in stark contrast to what God has promised. This Second Sunday in Lent announces in several different ways that the promises of God are sure, unconditional, and often delivered in surprising ways. […]

First Sunday in Lent The Lenten season begins with the story of Jesus’ temptations by the devil. The story sets a certain stage for what is to happen in Jesus’ life, but it also gives us some keys to understanding the promises of God. The Temptation story and its aftermath challenge us in our presumptions […]

The Transfiguration of our Lord The Sunday of the Transfiguration of Jesus stands in a strategic position in the church year. In one sense, it brings to a conclusion the Epiphany season. In the past six weeks, we have read and studied passages from the New Testament that revealed the person and work of Jesus […]