My, how nice it is to be back with you, writing a children’s sermon on Luke 14:25-33! I’ve been away for a few months due to a short-term pastoral assignment and a family move. Now we’re settled (sort of) and I’m back in action. If you had come to depend on my children’s sermons, please […]
A Children’s Sermon on Mark 7:24-37 — Loving People Different from You
Writing a children’s sermon on Mark 7:24-37 present both ordinary challenges and unusual ones. (You can find my regular Monday Meditation on this passage here.) On the ordinary side, a children’s sermon on Mark 7:24-37 has to decide what to do with two separate stories. I’m a firm believer that a children’s sermon needs to […]
Church Discipline — A Meditation on Matthew 18:15-20
This Sunday the Gospel text is Matthew 18:15-20, a classic text in discussions of church discipline, and the first of two weeks the Revised Common Lectionary will spend in Matthew 18. Though I seem constitutionally incapable of writing a genuinely short meditation, I’ll try to confine myself to a few observations on this text, especially […]
Monday Meditation: RCL Year C, 13th Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 18(23), Luke 14:25-33
Pity the lectionary preacher this week. Luke 14:25-33 is some of Jesus’ hardest teaching. You can count on a whole lot of scrambling in pulpits across the country to say that Jesus just couldn’t have meant what he said. All those hermeneutical gyrations can make you worry your orbit is out of balance. (But really […]