preaching john 3:1-21

There are three articles on this site written to provide preachers with pastoral reflections for sermons proclaiming the message of John 3:1-21. If you are to preach a sermon on this text ... or listen to one ... where do you think the emphasis should fall? What is the Word from God from these verses for our time and place or for you at this point in your life?

You can find preacher's notes at these three links: John 3:1-8, John 3:9-15 and John 3:16-21.

nothing has changed ... everything has changed

Here is a link to a sermon that proclaims Isaiah 55:1-13 with reference to Galatians and 1 Corinthians: Like Rain and Snow. This passage from Isaiah is one of the lessons set in the lectionary for the third Sunday of Lent this year. It is one of my favourite texts. Reading the sermon now I find myself drawn to the way it closes. The final paragraph begins this way:

Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. We go back to the same homes, the same studies, the same jobs, the same aches, the same world. Yet nothing is the same again. We are departing that world. We are leaving it behind. We are entering God’s new world ...

a sermon for the second sunday in lent

It has been six years since I preached a sermon for the second Sunday in Lent on the root gospel text found in Genesis 15:1-2,17-18. The three year cycle of the lectionary brings this passage around once again this coming Sunday. Here is a link to that sermon on the faith of Abraham and Sara - Children of the Promise.

let me see again

This is a sermon on Mark 10:46-52 - the story of Bartimaeus - from October 26, 2003 ... 

Jesus travels to Jericho once. Today is that day. Surely it is a big day, with plenty on the agenda: people to meet, teaching and healings among the crowds, unexpected guests at table with him, arguments with the powers that be. But the text says nothing about the day Jesus spends in Jericho. It says: “They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho ...”. The one event recorded and remembered from that full itinerary is an unwelcome interruption on the way out of town: “As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’”

a psalm for ash wednesday

University Hill Congregation continues the practice of inviting the congregation to share in hosting scripture throughout Lent. This year I have been assigned Psalm 51 ...

I remember when I first truly encountered Psalm 51. Rabbi Martin Cohen was team teaching with me in VST’s summer school. The course was called “Reading in Each Other’s Light.” Each day in class we read scripture over one another’s shoulder. On Tuesday we each chose a Psalm central to our tradition. I selected Psalm 22 - “My God, why have you forsaken me”. Martin chose Psalm 51. Here, he taught us, lies the heart of the Hebrew scripture. Here is the Psalm read by all Jews on the holiest day of the year - Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement.