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Lent 5 Year A 2026: John 11:1-45

On Saturday, October 26, 2013 Nebraska lost their afternoon game to Minnesota. In 2013, that was way worse than it is now. In the early evening, my phone rang. Now for those of you who might not have had cell phones in 2013, there are two things you need to know. First, the ringers on our phones were on. We answered phone calls in general. And second, our ringers were so on that we paid money for special ring tones. Different people had their own ringtones so you could tell who was calling without having to look. So while my phone, in general, rang to the tune of “Danger Zone” from the movie Top Gun , my brother had chosen his own ring tone on my phone. It was called “eagle’s call” and it came pre-downloaded on the phone. There were bells in the background followed by a ridiculous, loud caw. So back to that evening, my phone began to caw from its place on the sofa and I assumed my brother was calling to discuss that terrible, terrible football game. But when I answered the phone, it wa...
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Lent 3 Year A 2026: John 4:5-42

My first grade daughter has been learning about various habitats and the natural homes of various animals. From grasslands to savannahs to deserts, she will excitedly tell you all about what she’s been learning in school. We most often use the word habitat to describe the homes of animals, since human beings can live in almost any habitat. But the habitat of first century Jews and Samaritans is important to today’s lesson from John, which centers around a well. Wells in Jesus’ time served multiple purposes, both physical and social. Wells were hand-dug, stone-lined, and covered with heavy stones to prevent contamination and disputes. Located in the arid Near East, they were crucial for physical survival. Due to limited rainfall, wells were the primary water source for people and livestock, making them central to life. But equally important, wells served as community hubs, meeting places for major life events (like Rebekah and Rachel), and symbols of divine provision and blessing. Wells...
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Lent 1 Year A 2026: Genesis 2:15-17;3:1-7

20th century theologian Karl Barth was once at a party where he was asked if the snake in the garden did indeed talk, to which he responded, “Madam, it does not matter whether or not the serpent really spoke; what matters is what the serpent said.” No text in Genesis (or likely the entire Bible) has been more used, interpreted, and misunderstood than the story of the snake and Eve. This applies to careless, popular theology as well as to the doctrine of the church. (Brueggemann, 41) It has been assumed that today’s text from Genesis is a decisive text for the Bible and that it states the premise for all that follows. In fact, this is an exceedingly marginal text. No clear subsequent reference to it is made in the Old Testament. And even in the New Testament the linkage developed in the Augustinian tradition of anthropology regarding original sin and human nature is based on the argument of Paul in the early chapters of Romans. Even Paul does not make general appeal to this text. (41) F...
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Epiphany 5 Year A 2026: Isaiah 58:1-12

Commentator Paul Hanson titles his chapter on Isaiah 58, “Your Own Interests, or the Interests of God?” In order for that question to really sink in, it’s important to remember that the “I” in the reading is not Isaiah, personally. What makes the people listen to Isaiah is that he speaks on behalf of God. He’s God’s mouthpiece. Or perhaps it is better stated that they are God’s mouthpiece. Because, Isaiah is not even one person; there are at least three separate voices from the person called “Isaiah”, probably more. What matters is that all of the “me”s, “my”s, and “I”s in here are God. Even more than that, they are a God who speaks in poetry, not prose. In today’s text we are two chapters into what Bible scholars call “Third Isaiah”. We are coming out of the reminder in Second Isaiah that the redemptive activity of God occurs within the real stuff of human experience and world history. Although it is poetic in its language, it is not to be diminished as being solely metaphor. The savi...
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Epiphany 4 Year A 2026: Matthew 5:1-12

My husband and six-year-old took advantage of the bitterly cold weather last weekend to finish playing the Legend of Zelda game Tears of the Kingdom together. She loves to backseat game with him. She has many questions about the plot and many suggestions about what he ought to do. At one point in the game, Zelda swallows this stone that turns her into an immortal dragon, incapable of human thought and feeling. The dragon embodies her innate light, allowing her to live until the Master Sword and Link are prepared for the final battle. Zelda sacrificed her personhood to immortality to save her kingdom. My husband said the first time he played Tears of the Kingdom , that scene almost brought him to tears. This experience of Zelda has got me thinking about ways in which immortality is presented in stories. Typically, whoever is immortal is not to be envied, but rather pitied. Those who strive for immortality typically don’t receive it, or they do so in such a way that makes them instantl...
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Epiphany 3 Year A 2026: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18

During my first year in seminary, our Intro to New Testament class was assigned formal debates. We were given topics addressed in Pauls’ Epistle to the Corinthians and prepared a pro or con position. Judges were brought in from outside the class to decide whether our arguments for or against eating food sacrificed to idols were more convincing. My team won that debate. I brought up this story in a text thread of classmates as we were all writing our sermons this week. The group text includes a member of the opposing team who is apparently still salty about the “lack of imagination” in the judging panel. The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians was written in around the year 54 to a congregation he had founded several years earlier. Corinth was a large and prospering urban center with an ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse population. Paul writes from Ephesus, where he intends to stay for a while before traveling to Macedonia and then on to Corinth. The congregation of th...
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Epiphany 2 Year A 2025: Psalm 40

“In his book, The Souls of Black Folk , W.E.B. Dubois discusses ‘sorrow songs,’ music created by African captives, exiled in America. The songs are laments, prayers sung to God as a form of protest and supplication, looking for justice from a righteous God. The original American music conveys ‘soul-hunger’ and ‘restlessness’, ‘unvoiced longing toward a truer world’. The music also carries ‘hope - a faith in the final justice of things’. In the sorrow songs we have a window into the identities of an oppressed people and their belief in a God who saw them and would remember them. In their music they wrestled with ‘good and evil, suffering and pain.’ Their laments, like those in the psalms, created sacred space, a sanctuary for the soul.” (Fentress-Williams, 144) The psalms are typically sorted into certain types or genres that reflect their usage in various contexts, especially in the worship life of ancient Israel. There are thanksgiving psalms, hymns, wisdom psalms, creation psalms, li...
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