They hailed him King as he passed by, They strewed their garments in the road, But they were set on earthly things, And he on God. They sang his praise for that he did, But gave his mes...
John 14:9, Colossians 1:15, John 10:30, 1 John 4:8-16, Romans 8:32
A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...
Matthew 1:1-6, Luke 5:31-32, Matthew 9:12-13, Matthew 5:3, Galatians 3:26-28
We find hope in the ancestry of Jesus that no matter what we’ve done or where we come from, we too can be included in Jesus’ family. Jesus does not look for people who are perfect and have never faile...
When someone promises us something wonderful, we can hardly wait for that promise to be fulfilled. If the promise is something good, we want it now! We really don’t like to wait. And yet the very best...
John 1:46, 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, Matthew 20:16, Luke 1:51-53, James 2:1-9, Matthew 11:25, Isaiah 52:2-3, Philippians 2:5-8
The world has always despised people from the wrong places and with the wrong credentials. We are always trying to justify ourselves. We need desperately to feel superior to others. And everything abo...
Matthew 5:20, Romans 14:17, Luke 17:20-21, Matthew 28:18-20, Philippians 2:14-15
T. S. Eliot once described the current human endeavor as that of finding a system of order so perfect that we will not have to be good. The way of Jesus tells us, by contrast, that any number of syste...
If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what grief is, look at...
Luke 2:7, Philippians 2:7, Hebrews 2:9, Genesis 15:
The Child of glory, The Child of Mary, Born in the stable; The King of all, Who came to the wilderness And in our stead suffered; Happy they are counted Who to Him are near. When He Himself sa...
Genesis 1:14-16, Luke 2:13-14, Revelation 4:8, Psalm 148:3-5
Behold the Lightener of the stars On the crest of the clouds, And the choralists of the sky Lauding Him. Coming down with acclaim From the Father above, Harp and Lyre of song Sounding to Him. C...
How do we prepare for Jesus? Where is Jesus when the waiting hurts? Where is Jesus when our needs are great? Where is Jesus when life turns upside down? The real answer to those questions is offered ...
Sometimes, even if we're "doing everything right," life just turns upside down and we're left scrambling to find our footing. This is one of those stories. In Luke's gospel, ...
Many of us may have wondered what types of prayers Jesus would have prayed during his time on planet earth. In his book Praying with the Church , Scot McKnight notes that Jesus and his disciples,...
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, you who faithfully fulfill your promises. We thank you that you sent your only begotten son in the fullness of time. With all your church we celebrate his joyous com...
Introduction Jesus is the deliverer of Israel (1:54–55, 69–75, 77–79) Jesus states his mission in Luke 4:16-19: to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives and the oppressed. The word ...
Titus 2:11-14, Isaiah 9:2-7, Luke 2:1-14, (15-20), Psalm 96:
As we've been progressing through Advent, we've been asking: How do we prepare for Jesus? Where is Jesus when the waiting hurts? Where is Jesus when our needs are great? Where is Jesus when li...
Sometimes, even if we're "doing everything right," life just turns upside down and we're left scrambling to find our footing. This is one of those stories. In Luke's gospel, ...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? OT Foreshadowing While Luke’s account of the procurement of the donkey on which Jesus rides into Jerusalem has no precedent in the Hebr...
Leviticus 16:10, 21-22 , Genesis 37:18-28 , Isaiah 53:4-6 , John 11:49-52, Luke 23:13-25, Psalm 69:4, 7-9
The deep economic crisis that occurred in Russia soon after the collapse of communism resulted in a new wave of resentment and hostility toward Russian Jews. In times of crisis people look for a scape...
A friend of mine, lecturing in a theological college in Kenya, introduced his students to “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” This, he said, was a movement of thought and scholarship that in its ear...
We hear of wild new theories about Jesus. Every month or two some publisher comes up with a blockbuster saying that he was a New Age guru, an Egyptian freemason or a hippie revolutionary. Every year o...
Adapted Version A hundred welcomes to You, O Blessed Body, A hundred welcomes to you Body that was crucified. A hundred welcomes to your Body, O Lord. O Son of God, to you all hail, O T...
Job 38:1–11, Jonah 1:4–17 , Exodus 14:21–31 , Mark 4:35–41, Acts 27:13–44 , John 20:24–29
It was late October 1991. The crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail , out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, had taken the vessel five hundred miles out into the Atlantic. A cold front moving along the...
Genesis 12:1–3, Exodus 3:1–12, Isaiah 53:, Matthew 22:15–22 , John 4:1–42 , Acts 17:16–34
The world of Jesus was not the Old Testament Hebrew world. Like the United States now, Israel was multicultural, including a combination of Aramaic, Greek, and Roman influences. The people looked Jewi...
Almighty God, in raising Jesus from the grave, you shattered the power of sin and death. We confess that we remain captive to doubt and fear, bound by the ways that lead to death. We are slow to perce...
Blessing and honor and glory and might belong to Christ—the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He has turned our mourning into dancing and clothed us with joy. Know that you are forgive...
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15, John 13:10, John 14:7, John 14:13-14, John 13:31-32, John 14:19-21, John 14:16, John 14:15-18, John 3:8, John 8:46, Matthew 4:8-9, Luke 4:5-6, John 14:30, John 12:31, John 6:12, Ephesians 2:2, John 16:12, John 14:17, John 16:14, John 16:6, John 14:6
Context The Upper Room Discourse Our Gospel reading for today takes place within what has come to be known as the “Upper Room discourse,” a stretch of Scripture unique to John’s Gospel that begins ...
On the one side there is God in His glory as Creator and Lord. . . . And on the other side there is man, not merely the creature, but the sinner, the one who exists in the flesh and who in the flesh i...
Genesis 22:1-18, Isaiah 50:4-7 , 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Matthew 3:16-17 , John 5:19-20 , Psalm 40:6-8
In stark contrast to ourselves, when Jesus needed to know who he was, he listened to his Father’s voice, trusted that voice and claimed its truth for his own life.
Exodus 3:11-12 , 1 Kings 19:9-13, Isaiah 42:1 , Matthew 3:16-17 , Luke 9:28-36, Psalm 22:1
Jesus needed, not once, but again and again at each stage of his mission and each crisis in his living and dying, a freshly confirmed knowledge of his own identity.