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Matthew 28:1-10 Sermon Commentary
The world is about to turn! It is no longer the Sabbath and a new day and a new week is dawning. I just love that the NRSV describes the time with the -ing ending on dawn. Easter is meant for dawnings. We go from the quiet of the dawn to the shock of an…
Jeremiah 31:1-6 Sermon Commentary
Illustration: Have you ever experienced a moment when time stood still? Maybe you were afraid to breathe for fear of breaking the magic of the moment. It’s the stuff of hospital bedsides – the passing on of death and the passing into life of birth. It’s the good news of a proposal, the announcement of…
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 Sermon Commentary
Sometimes I think the Revised Common Lectionary wants to test the creativity of us preachers. Just last week for Palm Sunday / Passion Sunday, the Year A Lectionary served up either Psalm 118 or Psalm 31. Now on Easter we get Psalm 118 again and if you look ahead a little down the RCL road,…
Colossians 3:1-4 Sermon Commentary
On the American National Library of Medicine website the cognitive therapist Dr. Dean Schuyler reflects on what we might think of as what people often “set” our “hearts on” (cf. Colossians 3:2). “What,” he asks there, “do we think about? “We anticipate sometimes, thinking about events to come. We think about our children and sometimes…
Sermon Commentary From Other Lectionary Cycles
Matthew 28:1-10 Sermon Commentary
Easter Day A
We are accustomed to associating Easter Sunday with travel. What we are perhaps not accustomed to realize is that the Easter story involves travel, too. Today we don’t mind traveling in order to see loved ones, including on holidays like Christmas or Easter. Some of us routinely pack up our cars and hit the highway…
John 20:1-18 Sermon Commentary
Easter Day A
In a recent article on preaching in these days of COVID-19 isolation and fear, I suggested that despite the sadness we are all feeling at not being able to gather for Easter services in 2020, we don’t want to preach downer sermons. We don’t want our own disappointment at not being able to preach to…
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 Sermon Commentary
Easter Day A
What every preacher needs on Easter Sunday is an angle. Everyone already knows the story, so it is hard to astonish people as the women astonished the disciples with the news of an empty tomb on that first Easter morning. To help people experience that primitive astonishment and the kind of joyful thanksgiving to which…
Sermon Commentary for Sunday
This Week's Commentary
Easter Day A
The Easter Day A Sermon Commentaries include reflection and illustration ideas for Matthew 28:1-10 from the Lectionary Gospel; Jeremiah 31:1-6 from the Old Testament Lectionary; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 from the Lectionary Psalms; and Colossians 3:1-4 from the Lectionary Epistle.
Related Reformed confession: Lectionary Epistle: Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 45 (Lord’s Day 17)