Dear Partner in Preaching, If there was ever a text for the “spiritual but not religious” crowd, this may be it. Before jumping into John, however, perhaps a word or two on SBNR is in order. In general, we use this term rather broadly to indicate variously those who no longer affiliate with religion, the “nones” who seem open to spirituality defined broadly, and those who actually checked the SBNR box on a survey. Which means that SNBR can mean almost anything, and at times seems to encompass a little bit of everything. So here’s how I think of it: SBNR denotes those folks who are indeed open to a sense of mystery, curious about...

Dear Partner in Preaching, John 3:16, everyone’s favorite Bible verse. But I’ve wondered whether, if people thought about what this verse says for just a little longer than it takes to read a bumper sticker, it might just prove to be one of our least favorite verses in the Bible. Let me explain. Jesus articulates in this statement what Luther called “the Gospel in a nutshell” – that God is fundamentally a God of love, that love is the logic by which the kingdom of God runs, and that God’s love trumps everything else, even justice, in the end. I realize not everyone reads it this way. After all, Jesus says “everyone who...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Any careful reader of John’s Gospel will notice that his account varies from his synoptic cousins at a variety of points, few more significant than in today’s reading. Rather than place Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple at the end of Jesus’ public ministry, as Matthew, Mark, and Luke do, John places it here at the beginning of the story. Why? Because of distinct theological agendas. Keep in mind that the Gospels are confessions of faith from the first century rather than historical accounts of the twenty-first century. So each difference provides us with a clue to the distinct confession of faith the...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Yes, I have the Academy Awards on my mind. Actually, I only watched a bit of the program this past Sunday evening and have not seen all the contenders for best film yet. But of the various moments of the show I did catch, one helped me articulate what I think is the heart of not just this week’s passage but the whole of the Gospel. It was the song “Glory” from Ava DuVernay’s film Selma, and what struck me was how the song writers John Legend and Common described the march to Selma in the terms of glory. Think about that for a moment. That march, along with the larger struggle for civil rights, was...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Somewhere along the line – whether in a college English course or seminary preaching class I can’t quite remember – I was taught to craft a tight, clear theme sentence to guide the whole of the essay or sermon. I’ll confess that I don’t do that every week, but I will this time around. And keeping with the brevity of Mark’s Gospel – and, indeed, his somewhat truncated version of the temptation – I’m going to keep it short: the same Spirit that descends upon Jesus at his baptism now drives him into the wilderness. Did you ever notice that, by the way? That immediately after his Baptism Jesus is...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Oddly enough, there’s a scene from AMC’s record-breaking TV program The Walking Dead that popped into my head when reading this passage. No, no one turns brilliantly white. And there are no offers to build three booths. Rather, it’s a simple exchange between Rick Grimes, the sheriff who leads a band of survivors through a zombie-infested landscape and Herschel Greene, an older man who functions as something of a father-figure and mentor to Rick. They are discussing the horrors of their post-apocalyptic world when Herschel affirms that he still believes there is a plan to all this, that God has something in...