Lectionary Readings: Year A, Proper 25 In 1962, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth was on a lecture tour of the United States. Barth was one of the most influential theologians of the last century, and had written a lot of books. One of his major works was called Church Dogmatics, a series of 13 books…
Lectionary Readings – Year A, Proper 24 Today’s Gospel is another one of those interesting passages in the Bible that needs a bit more context. It starts out today with, “They were trying to entrap him,” but unless we’ve been reading straight through, we may have forgotten why that is. This conversation is right in…
Lectionary Readings: Year A – Proper 22 Today’s Gospel gets presented to us as a parable, but it’s actually what we would call an allegory. What’s the difference, you ask? A parable is a short story focused on human experience in order to teach a moral or spiritual lesson. An allegory is a story where…
When we hear the word “contagious,” we often think of sickness or some kind of infection, especially after the COVID pandemic six years ago – or even the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo right now. The word contagious has a negative connotation in almost all areas. But the word contagious is…
Lectionary Readings: Year A – Proper 21 Several years ago, I had a neighbor who was in the process of moving from one church to another. He was excited about the new church. Telling everyone how great it was. Until suddenly it wasn’t great. He complained about everything in the church, from music to sermons…
Lectionary Readings: Year A – Proper 20 If you came in here today feeling the world is spiraling out of control, you wouldn’t be alone. Any time we watch the news, we are inundated with stories of death, destruction, mayhem. Of theft, of fraud, or just people taking advantage of others. It seems, sometimes, like…
Lectionary Readings: Year A – Proper 19 Before we get into this parable in the Gospel, let’s remember the story of a minor prophet named Jonah, son of Amittai. God came to Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh, because the city was exceedingly wicked. And Jonah jumped up and immediately bought a ticket…
Lectionary Readings: Year A, Proper 18 Years ago I was listening to a husband and wife talking about their first few months as a married couple. Most of you may have a similar story, though maybe not as in depth as these two. It all started with the toilet paper roll. The husband liked the…
Lectionary Readings: Year A – Proper 17 Sometimes the way the lectionary splits things up is a bit odd. The readings we have today are a direct continuation of the conversation between Jesus and the disciples that we heard last week. And, instead of keeping the conversation in one reading, it was split into two.…
Mistaken Identity
Lectionary Readings: Year A – Proper 16 In 1882, Mark Twain published a little story here in the United States, which I’m sure all of you have heard about. It’s called The Prince and the Pauper, and it follows the lives of two young boys. One is Prince Edward VI, son of King Henry VIII…
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