Who exactly were Jesus and his mother at this wedding? Guests have authority to ask things of the wait staff, but no server in their right mind would take a guest’s order to “stop what you’re doing and draw 150 gallons of water.”

At what precise point did the water become wine? Was it still water when the waiters drew it out to take it to their boss? When the maitre d’ tilted it up to their lips?

Including Nathanael, who is silly enough to believe before he’s seen all the evidence like Jesus tells basically everyone else to do.

(And truly, the Sunday after Christmas is one of my favorite services of the year.)

Even the iconic baptism of Jesus takes place offstage in between two paragraphs of a monologue, as John’s gospel tells it.

One of the best preaching disciplines I’ve learned is to talk about money when the Bible talks about money. So with mere days remaining in the Christmas shopping season: Commerce is synonymous with manufactured dissatisfaction is synonymous with exile. But then, the answer is the Word of God.

Meanwhile, God promises to dwell where God always has: among the people.

Solomon’s famous court case involving the two sex workers suggests connections with John 4:1-30 and 8:3-11. This year my attention is on the woman whose son died suddenly: Where is the compassion for her? What does justice (divine or royal) have to do with grief?

Solomon shows that he will be good at the “wise judgment” part, but there’s foreshadowing of the “entangled with foreign gods” and “opulence extracted from the people” aspects that will undermine the whole kingdom. Notes on 1 Kings 3:4-9 (10-15) 16-28:
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Alternatively, in which God acts out the divine desire for loyalty not sacrifice and exercises the power of the resurrection so you’ll know what it looks like later.