Category: Uncategorized

  • Proper 5 (10)Third Sunday after Pentecost, 9th June 2024

    Mark 3:20-353:20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 3:21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 3:22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler…

  • Preaching Paths 9 June 2024 Proper 5B

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary The scene of our gospel text, Mark 3:(19b) 20-35, is Jesus’ home town. No warm welcome awaits. In a chiastically structured narrative, Mark presents three groups that, in one way or another, impede Jesus’ ministry of healing and exorcism. First, the admiring crowds (vv 20, 32) press…

  • Preaching Paths 2 June 2024 Proper 4B

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary Today’s text, Mark 2:23-3:6, presents two scenes in which questions around sabbath observance are at stake. If we trace our way backward through these scenes and the preceding ones, we discover a concatenation of issues, each “nested,” in a sense, within a broader one.  We find that…

  • Proper 4 (9) Second Sunday after Pentecost, 2nd June 2024

    Mark 2:23-3:62:23 One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 2:24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” 2:25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did…

  • Trinity Sunday, 26th May 2024

    Romans 8:12-178:12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh– 8:13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 8:14 For all who are led…

  • Preaching Paths 26 May 2024 TRINITY Year B

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary On occasion, preachers find themselves taking issue with editorial divisions of a biblical text, as I do with our chosen text for Trinity Sunday Year B, Romans 8:12-17. Commentators express consternation at the “awkward transition” from v 13 to v 14, yet take for granted the editors’…

  • Orthodox Easter Sunday, 5th May 2024

    My article (in the Greek edn of Huffpost): https://www.huffingtonpost.gr/entry/to-pascha-se-treis-praxeis-kai-parodies_gr_66312dc7e4b0849b2edd349c?utm_campaign=share_email&ncid=other_email_o63gt2jcad4

  • Preaching Paths 19 May 2024 Pentecost Sunday

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary Why, one might ask, would we preach from John when Luke’s dazzling Acts 2 account of the Spirit poured out is on the lectionary menu? We can preach from John without setting Acts aside.  A celebrative presentation of Acts 2:1-21 is fitting every Pentecost Sunday. Overlapping readings…

  • Seventh Sunday of Easter, 12th May 2024

    John 17:6-1917:6 “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 17:7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 17:8 for the words that you gave to me I…

  • Preaching Paths 12 May 2024 Easter 7B

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary The Gospel reading today, John 17:6-19, is the middle section of Jesus’ intercessory prayer, the final chapter of the “Farewell Discourses” (John 13-17). Here, the one who is God’s Word embodied in the world communes with the divine Source, the one he calls “Father,” about his mission…