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Rev. Chelsey Harmon lives in Vancouver, BC and is a bivocational pastor at The Bridge Community Church (CRC) in Langley, BC. Chelsey is also on staff at Churches Learning Change, a non-profit that aims to help congregations and leaders pursue personal and congregational transformation. She earned her M.Div. at Calvin Theological Seminary (2009), a ThM in Spiritual Theology at Regent College (2023) and is currently a part-time PhD student at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity where she studies historical examples of Trinitarian mysticism and theology.
Chelsey has been writing sermon commentaries for the CEP website since 2019.
Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28
Commentary
Proper 15A
By going to the region of Tyre and Sidon, Jesus enters a borderland—where the people of Israel give way to a more Canaanite population. Considering closely what the woman says throughout this pericope, it’s clear that she knows some things about Judaism, and she’s come to believe some things about Jesus. This borderland, this place…
Matthew 14:22-33
Commentary
Proper 14A
Jesus’s literal declaration, “I am” (translated as “it is I”) is the very center of this story. Literally: in his commentary on the miracles of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, Birger Gerhardsson counted the Greek words and noted that these two, egō eimi, are the exact middle of this story. Because Jesus is the…
Matthew 14:13-21
Commentary
Proper 13A
Our text begins with “Now when Jesus heard this…” What Jesus heard was not good news. What Jesus heard was that John the Baptist had been executed. Upon hearing such sad news, Jesus withdrew by himself, presumably to grieve and to pray. Wanting to be alone is a common reaction when someone you care about…
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Commentary
Proper 12A
The lectionary has gathered for us here the rest of the parables about the Kingdom in Matthew 13. God’s Kingdom is like a mustard seed, yeast, a treasure that can be buried, and a pearl—all small things that have the potential to lead to big changes. The Kingdom of heaven is also like a net…
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Commentary
Proper 11A
There are three parables that Jesus tells to the crowds and then explains to his disciples and all of them are in this chapter of Matthew. We considered the first one last week as we read about Jesus the sower of the seed of “the word of the Kingdom.” The last one is much shorter…
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Commentary
Proper 10A
This week we transition to parables, Jesus’s stories that bend and challenge our understanding with essential truths shared through images that spark our imaginations. The parable of the sower and the seed is a teaching about how—or even if—we come to understand these things of God and his Kingdom. We begin with the sower, or…
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Commentary
Proper 9A
What will Jesus call our generation? Do we run the same risk of refusing to join Jesus? Of rejecting the ways of God and God’s agents (like John the Baptist)? Does the Triune God look upon us and sigh, frustrated that we keep refusing to truly see and welcome wisdom, kindness, grace, and compassion for…
Matthew 10:40-42
Commentary
Proper 8A
This is the end of a very long section on what the disciples will experience as Jesus sends them out to the harvest of need (Matthew 9.35-10.8 from a few weeks ago). It seems odd to me that Jesus is saying this to the disciples. I mean, rather than the disciples, isn’t this the message…
Matthew 10:24-39
Commentary
Proper 7A
We’re in the same narrative moment as last week’s lectionary passage, meaning we are still considering the nature of our calling to go out as disciple-apostles who proclaim the good news of God through doing Kingdom good. You’ll note that last week had the option of including the verses where Jesus describes the hardship that…
Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23)
Commentary
Proper 6A
Packed into this passage is a description of not only the calling we have as Jesus’s disciples to be people who proclaim the good news through our actions, it also gives us a real-time picture of how Jesus feels for us. We don’t have nearly as many live-action emotive moments from the Christ in the…
About Chelsey Harmon