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“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” [John 3:14-15]. In spite of the best efforts of several Sunday school teachers at Olney Presbyterian Church in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I neither profited from nor enjoyed our “Bible Verse” races. For those of you who are uninitiated to such thrills, these were generally time “fillers.” The teacher would glance at her watch, realize that while she had finished the lesson for the day, five minutes remained before the buzzer would sound to tell us kids that it…

The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” [John 2:18-19]. A decade or so ago (I’m trying to be obtuse here, so as not to give away too much), a friend and I engaged in some good-natured “religious” banter. He wasn’t a particularly close friend, but we had enjoyed quite a few conversations over the years on a broad range of topics, including Christianity. Like me, he saw himself as a “thinker.” In both of our cases, I’m not sure that assessment was/is justified. On this particular occasion,…

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!” [Genesis 17:17-18, the verses that follow the Old Testament reading for the Second Sunday in Lent, Year B, RCL, NIV]. Abram was 75 years old when Yahweh told him that from him would spring forth a great nation that would bless all the peoples on earth [Genesis 12:1-3]. Of course, that seemed absolutely impossible to Abram. While he and his wife, Sarai, almost ten years Abram’s…

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him [Mark 1:12-13, a portion of the Gospel reading for the First Sunday in Lent, Year B, RCL, NRSV]. Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. We begin our Lenten Sunday readings in just a few days. While the reading appointed in the Lectionary for the First Sunday in Lent rotates each year among the three Synoptic gospels, the story line is always the same: Following Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan, he is filled with the…

Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him” [Mark 9:7, NIV]. We’re approaching the tenth anniversary of the untimely death of the Reverend Dr. Peter Gomes, a distinguished preacher and Harvard Divinity School professor, and a former visiting professor at our own Duke Divinity School. Only 68 when he died on February 28, 2011, Gomes had, for a number of years, participated in an unusual annual “pulpit swap.” One Sunday each year, Gomes would come to Duke to preach in the Chapel. Will Willimon, then Dean of Duke Chapel, would travel to Cambridge to…

“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? [Isaiah 40:25-26, NRSV]. In the text that begins with the 40th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet has been commissioned to perform a difficult task. Yahweh has called upon him to proclaim hope to a people who only know despair. Yahweh charges Isaiah to tell the exiles in Babylon that Yahweh is going to deliver them from their captivity. He doesn’t say how, and He doesn’t say when. Isaiah’s task is problematic because his message must be delivered to the captives at a…

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. [Mark 1:25-26, NRSV, a portion of the Gospel lesson for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year B]. A few years ago, I shared a series of difficult conversations with a mother of two children, one about 14, the other 8 or 9 [some of the facts have been altered to protect the parties]. In one of the sessions, the woman, whom I knew to be in her early 40s, said to me, “I know what happened to me was terrible,…

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you” [Jonah 3:1-2]. Because of you-know-what, our family, like yours, could not celebrate Christmas 2020 in the usual manner. For Jane and me, there was no packed Duke Chapel for Handel’s Messiah, no crowded church service on Christmas Eve, and no hustle and bustle with last minute gift errands. Because the weather forecasts for Christmas Day here in Durham weren’t promising, the extended family (children, spouses, and 7 grandchildren) gathered on the Tuesday evening before Christmas at–not inside–Zambrero’s, a new restaurant in the…

And the lad Samuel was ministering to the LORD in Eli’s presence, and the word of the LORD was rare in those days, vision was not spread about [1 Samuel 3:1, The Hebrew Bible, tr. by Robert Alter, a portion of the Old Testament reading for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year B]. Quick, quick, think to yourself, “What do I remember about Samuel, from the Old Testament?” Don’t do an online search. What do you remember? If you’re like a lot of folks, you may think your memory is sparse. But I bet you remember more than you imagine. I bet, for example, you remember Samuel’s mother,…

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi [Matthew 2:16, New International Version]. There are two ways to preach the story of the visit of the magi to the Holy Couple and the Messiah. One method–the more popular one–is not only suitable for children, its three wise men, three gifts, and popular Christmas hymn, “We Three Kings,” supply the pastor with a ready-made “three points and a poem” sermon for the congregation.…