11-Apr-21 John 20:19-31 They are safe and secure, but they are also miserable. It is evening of Easter Day, and the disciples have very likely walled themselves into the upper room where they had celebrated their last Passover with Jesus, just before he was arrested. The doors of the room are locked, because the disciples […]
Category: Gospels
You Are Looking for Jesus
04-Apr-21 Easter Day Mark 16:1-8 You gotta love the Gospel of Mark. It is short, it is snappy, it moves along at a lightening fast pace and it quits with a cliff-hanger. Mark seems to end his gospel rather abruptly at the end of verse eight, and that can be rather troublesome to some of […]
O the Stench, O the Glory!
21-Mar-21 John 12:1-8 Fifth Sunday in Lent I don’t usually hear people shouting during our calls to worship, even though the clear and biblical instruction from within some of them is to do exactly that. In our psalm this morning, when it was my turn to shout, I intentionally disobeyed. I’ll not ask how you […]
Good Enough For Who it’s For
14-Mar-21 Acts 2:42-47 Fourth Sunday in Lent It has been said that I am cheap. I prefer to be referred to as a person who exercises the wisdom of frugality. I bristle a little bit at cheap, because it was a word that my mother used of other women who wore items of clothing of […]
Our Lady of the Window
28-Feb-21 John 4:1-4 Second Sunday in Lent There had to have been a committee. That’s just the way Baptists work. There must have been lots of samples to look over, and there must have been some difficult choices to make. And maybe some strong opinions one way or another, and maybe even an argument or […]
A Fumbling Pharisee
21-Feb-21 John 3:1-17 One of the characteristic flaws of the human species is our inability to communicate with one another. The art of communication is something that very few of us have mastered. Too often we think that we have heard something, and we respond to it without actually having listened to it. This happens […]
Light has Dawned
31-Jan-21 Matthew 4:12-17 Matthew assumes that his readers know all about why John the Baptist had been arrested and put in prison, and so he doesn’t tell us that story until chapter fourteen. Unfortunately for John, in addition to being a baptizer, he was also a hellfire and damnation prophet. And it turns out that […]
Here’s Mud in Your Eye
17-Jan-21 John 9:1-41 I am slowly acclimating myself to the world of the computer. My wife tells me that it is relatively safe to ask the computer a question. Until just a few weeks ago, I used to ask her to look up stuff for me. It wasn’t that long ago that I asked her […]
Christmas Eve 2020
“And she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the Inn.” Those are some of the most familiar words in all of the Scriptures. They are simple, straight forward words, and the absolutely remarkable […]
Called into God’s Plan
20-Dec-20 Luke 1:26-38 Fourth Sunday In Advent In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, the angel Gabriel made an uninvited and unannounced visit to the young woman who would become the mother of the Messiah. He had a message for Mary that was shocking and completely out of the realm of her imagination. As soon […]