12172022 – Matthew 1. 18-25 With just a handful of days TO GO before Christmas…many Americans will be scurrying and rushing around… completing their FINAL Christmas preparations or at least attempting to do so. This is a HIGH DRAMA time of the year. They will hopefully be COMPLETING their last-minute SHOPPING, finalizing their TRAVEL PLANS, […]
12142022 – Matthew 11. 2-11 John is IN PRISON. Fortunately for us, “that experience” is foreign to us. But it is NOT foreign to everyone, including, THE BAPTIZER. He was a “brand new political prisoner.” Everything about life in a cell was strange and understandably frightening. He was held underground, in a remote dungeon, cold […]
12102022 – Luke 11. 2-11 John the Baptizer had “EXPECTATIONS” about the ONE who WAS to Come. He WASN’T alone. A lot of people did. It was actually pretty COMMONPLACE. Some thought of a KING, like King David. The Greatest King of All Time. The “GOAT!” Some expected A “WISE RELIGIOUS RULER,” perhaps someone like […]
12072022 – Matthew 3. 1-12 John has always intrigued me. In a strange kind of way, I always look forward to his YEARLY visit. He gets us. It is like he peers into our souls, into our very beings. He sees what others apparently do not, and if they do, they say nothing. I am […]
11302022 – Matthew 24. 36-44 The situation was “MORE THAN DIRE.” The whole “Jesus movement” was “very SMALL” and “FRAGILE.” The followers of Jesus feared being “OUTED.” Being OUTED – many times meant being IMPRISONED or DEAD. When the gospel of Matthew was written there may have been A FEW THOUSAND people who “IDENTIFIED” as […]
11262022 – Matthew 24. 36-44 Please allow me to start out with a little bit of “a refresher course.” It is not often that we talk about “APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE,” “APOCALYPSES,” or that whole “genre of literature.” The first “apocalyptic writings” date to around the year 200 BCE. The word “apocalyptic” although “a big churchy word” […]
12222021 – Advent IV, Luke 1. 39-45 A young girl. A girl is under the age of 12 ½. A woman is 12 ½ and older. From a small, tiny, insignificant town. In an enemy occupied territory. With a “humble spirit” and “a faith without borders”…SHE travels on her own, like a soldier on a […]
12152021 – Luke 3. 7-18 Advent III I think I am right. But I have been wrong so many times in my life, that I even doubt myself sometimes, maybe even often. I think I am right. I think we do not HEAR the Baptizer. Maybe we never did hear him. We silence him and […]
12042021 – Luke 3. 1-6 This passage from Luke for the Second Sunday of Advent points to “competing worldviews.” It clashes, tussles, grapples, and contends with, the best of the worldviews of the time. The opening verses are “deceptively subversive.” Into the “religious reigns” AND into the “Imperial kingdoms” of the first century the WORD […]
12232020 – Luke 1. 26-38 Advent 4B Biblically speaking, WHEN a messenger from God SHOWS UP, you know things are about to change in a BIG way. Yikes! Get SCARED. Get VERY scared! Going back in the Hebrew Bible, we KNOW of stories about other Biblical women. Women like Sara or Rachel or Rebecca or […]