Luke 3:1-6 Dear Partner in Preaching, I just love Luke’s audacity! He is, as you probably know, of all the Evangelists the one who identifies most self-consciously as a historian. (Not a twenty-first century historian, mind you, but a first century one!) For this reason, Luke writes a formal introduction to his Gospel, the only one of the four to do so. This also explains Luke’s concern with naming various political leaders on the scene in Luke 2:1ff. and in today’s reading. As a historian, he wants to anchor the events he describes in the larger political and historical scene of the world. And that’s where his audacity comes in....
John 19:1-4
posted by DJL
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and striking him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, “Look,...
John 2:13-22
posted by DJL
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the moneychangers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out...
Big History
posted by DJL
I love David Christian’s concept of teaching “big history.” And by big, he means, really, really big. In this TED Talk, he narrates the history of the universe in 18 minutes. Why? To invite us to place our lives, dreams, hopes, setbacks, and struggles into the largest...
Matthew 1:17
posted by DJL
So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations. The story goes that when Abraham Lincoln first met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the...