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Being Lost and Being Found
The question isn’t what is lost or who is looking. These parables aren’t about the lost, but what it is to participate in losing and finding.
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The Challenge of the Coin
There is nothing worse than recommending someone not come to your church. It pains me to say it, then and now. A young seeker, looking to reconnect with church wanted to talk. We knew each other from previous work, so it was a different kind of awkward. It wasn’t the usual talking-to-strangers kind. She was…
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Let’s get this party started
a homily for Proper 19C Text: Luke 15:1-10 In or Out? There are a million different ways to enter into this gospel. It is a familiar enough one that some of our long-tenured members are likely to have heard them all. The favorite approach is this one: these are two of the three “lost” parables:…
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Hate the sin? Chances are you hate the sinner.
a Sermon for Lent 4C Text: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Two Sons Most depictions of this story focus on the first half: the sinful son, the return to the farm, the generosity and mercy of the father, and the embrace. It is a wonderful and evocative image. I have a book full of these images, art…
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The parable you never knew
Sandwiched between two of Jesus’s most famous parables is a small teaching about a lost coin. And it cracks the whole thing wide open. Two of the most recognizable parables sandwich a poor, misunderstood parable in Luke’s gospel. A parable of revolutionary proportions, often mistaken for an afterthought. A small, instructive parable that speaks today…
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Finding the lost
As I prepared for the sermon a little over a week ago on Luke 15:1-10, I was bowled over by a thought—too tangential for what I was hoping to do on Sunday, but too important to ignore. Jesus introduces a trio of “lost” things in parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost…