April 20, 2025
In Jewish biblical interpretation, students engage in a practice called Midrash, in which they discuss details that are left out of a text, or questions that the text raises but never quite addresses. This could be things like, “How did Sarah react when Abraham took Isaac up to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him, apparently because God commanded it?” Or, “Why did Lot’s wife turn around to see the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and why did she turn to a pillar of salt?”
April 13, 2025
Did you know that the first ticker-tape parade was held in New York City in 1886, during the celebration of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty?
It was apparently a spontaneous thing that time, but it quickly became a tradition. As the parade wound through the financial district, so the New York Times reported, office boys began to unwind spools of ticker tape out the windows over the procession, until the older, dignified and respectable businessmen pushed them out of the way so they could get in on the fun.
April 6, 2025
When I planned out my sermon topics for April, I noted that today’s reading is about “two healings.” The first one is obvious: as he goes into Jerusalem, Jesus encounters a blind beggar and restores his sight to him. This passage is pretty clearly borrowed from Mark, but Luke makes a couple changes to it.
March 30, 2025
This parable is truly fascinating to me. It might not be as beloved as last week’s three parables, especially the final one about the father whose lost son returns. But it’s fascinating, because the more you look at it, the more levels it seems to be working on.
March 23, 2025
Have you ever lost something really important?
I don’t mean when you pull your clothes out of the dryer and find that you’ve lost one of a pair of socks, or when you’re digging around looking for a lid to match the plastic container you’ve put leftovers in, and there just isn’t one. Where did it go? It’s not like it grew legs and walked away…but it sure isn’t where it’s supposed to be.
No, I mean something really important.
March 16, 2025
A certain girls’ softball coach, whose name I don’t know, was facing a difficult decision as he warmed the team up for their last practice before their final roster was announced. Brenda came to practice and tried hard, but she couldn’t quite get the knack of hitting the ball, and missed most of the fly balls that came her way out there in right field.[1] The coach planned to cut Brenda, until his daughter, who was also on the team, pulled him aside.
March 9, 2025
When we read books that were written in different eras, we oftentimes run into language or concepts that we are not fans of in this day and age. We might go back to Shakespeare and read The Taming of the Shrew, and before we even open the book, we object to the title. Years ago, and sometimes even today, we hear a woman being described as “shrewish.”. And sometimes, that woman truly has an unpleasant personality; but oftentimes she is simply someone who speaks her mind, or asks for what she wants, or is simply assertive in ways that are admired in men but not in women.
Luke 9:28-45
Have you ever heard of thin places?
Or thin times, perhaps?
What does it mean for a time or a place to be thin?
Luke 7:36-50
Most folks in Punkin Center, Kansas, didn’t even know the woman’s name. She was very old, and other than occasional trips to the doctor, she never left her rundown house on the very edge of town, so very few people had even laid eyes on her in years. She didn’t belong to either the Catholic church or the community church, which was formed when the Methodist, Christian, and Baptist churches in town merged about thirty years ago.
