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“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” The lawyer wanted to know which commandment weighed the most. So Jesus answers him with the words every son of Israel prayed morning and evening: “You shall love the Lord your God.” Not simply “God” in general, whom the spiritual, if not religious, seek: either within themselves or upon the mountain. Not even “a God,” over whom the churches wrangle. No, your God. That word is a claim. Before the command ever asks for your

The lawyers and Pharisees’ contempt, wearing silence, is not the only way they break the Third Commandment. Even before the healing, Jesus noted how they chose the best places, and in that vying for position, that same contempt wore pride ever before silence. So, now, He says to them, “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him.” Well-versed in the Scriptures, they should know as muc

So, there are these two great crowds approaching one another. At the head of one is Jesus, the Lord of Life. And at the head of the other? Who leads that procession of death? It was not the grieving widow, or those who bore her dead son, or the crowd itself, though they were all its captives. It was not even the coffin, laden with the dead young man. No, at the head of that procession was the devil. The devil: who mocks our grief and laughs at us and has done so ever since h

“Behold the birds of the air,” He says. A bird neither frets nor worries itself about tomorrow, for it neither sows nor reaps nor gathers into barns. And yet it is hardly idle, for it goes about its task, finds a scattered seed or a worm in the ground, brings it to the nest, and then sings on a twig, twittering at your foolish fretting. Your heavenly Father has provided for it. Will He not also provide for you? And how is that bird fed? From the ground itself, a worm brought

This one, this Samaritan, was twice the outsider: an outcast, both because of his disease, and to the very priests who would examine him. And because of that latter reason, perhaps less inclined to mistake their pronouncement for the whole of his healing. When he saw that he was healed, he turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. No priest sent him back. No law required his return; everything demanded of him,

Did either the priest or the Levite wonder whether he had been careless, walking that treacherous road alone, whether he might have brought this on himself? Is that not the question you reach for as well, when the trouble is not yours and you would rather it stayed that way? “He should not have been walking there,” you say. “He should have known better.” Is it not remarkable how quickly the Law becomes something you are certain someone else has broken? And yet, have you done

Deafness and the corruption of speech are not defects that fell on one, or some. They are the result of the hereditary disease, inherited by every child begotten of man and born of woman, carried down the ages, to your own ears and mouth, here in this park this morning. For you have your own instances of the same deafness and muteness. After all, this is not just an account told once about a healing long ago. When did you last hear His word and turn a deaf ear to it? Was it

“I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Beloved, that verdict does not stop with him. It falls on you. Your own thanks, veiling your judgment of others, prayed before either man opened his mouth, He hears. Your own smirk, the one you think no one saw, He sees. Yet hear what going down means before anything else follows. And you He made alive, who

Weeping. Rejection. The Cross. All that sounds more fitting for Holy Week, rather than for some ordinary summer Sunday. And so you might wonder, then, why you’re hearing an account like this now, rather than then, or even, perhaps, nearer the end of the Church year. Well, there’s a reason for it: some portions of the Church year are bound to actual historical time, and this is one of them. The destruction of Jerusalem’s temple, and of Jerusalem itself, in A.D. 70, which Jesus

The unjust steward doesn’t merely hand back paid bills, no; rather, he changes them. And the master commends him for such shrewd dealings. What’s that all about? Here’s what I hear: the steward is the pastor. For indeed, every preacher Christ has ever sent has been exactly this: unjust, squandering what’s entrusted to him, still bound for the same exit as the rest of mankind. O, vanity of vanities, indeed! I, and all those whom Christ has called and ordained to stand in His s