psalms on Parables

In the second century before Christ the great rival to Roman power in the Mediterranean world was Carthage, the Phoenician city-state located on the north African coast. It had been founded in 822 B.C...

This is one of Jesus’ most vivid parables. He paints a dramatic picture of two figures, with a twist to upend his hearer’s expectations. While the context of this passage involves the dynamics of an a...

Ancient lens What's the historical context? Jesus' Strangest Tales Occasionally Jesus tells a parable that just doesn’t quite fit the framework of his teaching.  Already in Luke we had...

Introduction Our lectionary text is inextricably linked with the five verses that precede it. For that reason, I’ll give a summary of verses 1-4. It’s possible the lectionary authors chose to separat...

Introduction  Luke 16:1-13 isn’t an easy parable to preach on. It looks for all the world like Jesus is commending a guy who’s basically a dishonest rascal. You will sometimes see interpreters tying ...

Context: The Grumblers Jesus tells the three parables of Luke 15 to “the Pharisees and scribes” who were grumbling. Throughout Luke’s gospel account Jesus has been involved in controversy with the Ph...

Context This passage takes a number of turns that may, at first, seem disconnected from one another. Our text is part of a larger teaching discourse of Jesus in Luke’s gospel that has been causing te...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Small Town Boys The towns in this area were small and close together, but they were not particularly large.  As such, even a few thousa...

Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h...

Glimpses of God’s Kingdom In these parables, Jesus provides two glimpses of God’s Kingdom: the slow growth of a seed into a stalk of wheat and the growth of a humble mustard seed. Both of Jesus’ para...

Coming to the end This is Jesus’s last story before his Last Supper, and while we do not want to put too much emphasis on salvation at the expense of Kingdom life in the present, we cannot ignore cle...

Coming to the end This is Jesus’s last story before his Last Supper, and while we do not want to put too much emphasis on salvation at the expense of Kingdom life in the present, we cannot ignore cle...

Preaching Commentary Coming to the end This is Jesus’s last story before his Last Supper, and while we do not want to put too much emphasis on salvation at the expense of Kingdom life in the presen...

Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all the humans and animals ...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all ...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Preach the Word, Rest in God’s Work Maybe I tend to focus on the negative, but when I read the parable of the soils, I tend to focus on the soils that struggle...