Luke 15:11-32 I love the American folksinger Carrie Newcomer. I first heard her music some years back at a church conference in Indianapolis. We were gathered in a large convention center and were suffering under an evening emcee trying desperately to be funny. So, when this well-intentioned “comedian” introduced our evening’s musical entertainment, I slumped in my seat. I was sure I was about to hear music as bad as the feeble attempt at comedy had been. I was so very wrong!

Luke 15:1-10 Preachers salivate when the fifteenth chapter of Luke shows up. Who cannot warm to the shepherd who hits the hills to find the sole lost sheep or the woman who tears her house apart to find the one lost coin or the loving dad who weeps with joy as his prodigal son returns home and then goes out to find his eldest son who is lost but has never gone anywhere? A word of caution, though: take care when handling parables, especially the three parables in Chapter Fifte

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 Mark 12:28-34 As a young Jew, Jesus would have grown up saying the Shema twice a day, the reminder from the book of Deuteronomy that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5). As a younger adult, a scribe recites the Shema to Jesus and then Jesus adds these words from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19). Love of God and love of neighbor are not optional equipm