Year C Isaiah 52:7-10 Psalm 98 Hebrews 1:1-4 John 1:1-14 May the words of my mouth O God… speak your truth… I didn’t want it to be John’s Gospel tonight… not on Christmas Eve… I wanted the familiar stories about Mary and Joseph… and inns… and mangers… and oxen and sheep… and a baby… and shepherds in the...
Year C Micah 5:2-5a Canticle 15 Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-45 May the words of my mouth O God… speak your truth… I have no business preaching today… I’m a man… and while the author of this Gospel is also a man… this is a story about women… in one of my seminary textbooks… the Women’s Bible Commentary … ...
Year C Zephaniah 3:14-20 Canticle 9 Philippians 4:4-7 Luke 3:7-18 May the words of my mouth O God… speak your truth… Have you ever had the experience… of learning about something… of being confident that you were right… and acting on that knowledge… of making decisions perhaps even critical decisions based on what you knew… only to find...
Year C Malachi 3:1-4 Canticle 16 (Luke 1:68-79) Philippians 1:3-11 Luke 3:1-6 May the words of my mouth O God… speak your truth… When Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States… and John Patterson the governor of Alabama… when J. Edgar Hoover served as the omnipotent autocrat of the FBI… and Billy Graham and Norman Vincent...
When I was in seminary, we learned how to become detectives as it related to scripture. We were taught to ask questions about the author’s intended message, and to gain insights into how his own readers would have heard and understood it. And generally speaking, we explored the texts according to five categories, or...