RoboPreacher

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke! Normally she cherished such calls. Now that her husband had passed, every phone call her daughter made was a treasure. Suddenly, though, the phone was heavy in her hand. Suddenly, though, this conversation was by no means a treasure. This mother couldn't believe what her daughter had said, what she had heard... So it was when her only-daughter made the announcement to the congregation that news finally sunk in. Her legs stuck to the ground, her head felt as it it were deep underwater with tides pushing her this way and that, and all around her a terrible roar. This widow wondered if the world itself had been turned upon itself. "I have a brain-tumor that will eventually take my life," her daughter had said to the congregation. "I'd like your prayers." It wasn't right, burying her daughter - it should be the other way around, the mother thought... But so it was, that someone in the congre...

you don't need to look up TheGospel for this Sunday is so interesting, so loaded with humanity, so incredible that the problem for the preacher isn't "what can I preach," but rather "where to begin." The scene is set, right after Jesus heals a Gentile he goes to another town in Galilee, and as he enters the city his entourage is interrupted by another; an entourage of death. A young man; young enough not to be married yet, but presumably old enough to provide some economic support to his widowed mother; has died. There is a funeral procession carrying this young man outside the city, so the mother can bury her son. It is tragic. As the two parties cross paths, however, something remarkable happens. Jesus breaks from the entourage of life, and in so doing, interrupts the procession of the entourage of death. Jesus breaks from his group to cross the boundary of clean/unclean; the boundary of life into death. When Jesus does this, tim...