Rev. Douglas Bratt is a Minister of the Word in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. After serving Christian Reformed churches in Iowa, Michigan and Maryland, he retired in July, 2024. He enjoys spending time with his grandchildren, reading good literature, and watching televised sports in his free time.
Doug began writing sermon commentaries for the CEP website in 2006 and started writing weekly in 2012.
Revelation 1:4-8
Commentary
Easter 2C
It sometimes seems as if 21st century North American culture has largely omitted formal greetings from its communications. At least some of us have replaced, “Dear Joan (or John),” with something like “Hey.” In fact, in the case of emails, we often skip greetings altogether and simply hurry to what we wish to communicate. I…
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Commentary
Easter Day C
It’s a juxtaposition I’ll not forget as long as I have any memory. God graciously but quite suddenly brought my dad from life through death to Life on Easter Sunday, 2021. He died, as we reported in his obituary, “in the sure hope of the resurrection.” My dad’s death was for Jesus’ followers who loved…
Philippians 2:5-11
Commentary
Palm Sunday C
The most recent New International Version of the Bible offers a slight twist on this Sunday’s famous Epistolary Lesson. After all, while the 1985 edition of the NIV rendered Philippians 2:5 as, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus,” a more recent translation reads, “In your relationships with one another, have…
Philippians 3:4b-14
Commentary
Lent 5C
As I prayerfully contemplated this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, an old cliché kept coming to mind: “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” So, for example, my wife doesn’t enjoy eating beef liver. I, on the other hand, enjoy consuming a well-prepared liver. While I consider the Detroit Tigers baseball team to be the height of…
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Commentary
Lent 4C
Christians might argue that a source of the world’s hatred and violence is our failure to view people the way God views us. Countries wage wars and people launch verbal broadsides against each other in part because we believe that our enemies are something other than beloved image-bearers of the living God. Parts of North…
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Commentary
Lent 3C
In my experience, few verses of Scripture are more often misquoted than 1 Corinthians 10:13. Countless faithful Christians have paraphrased it as “God never gives us more than we can handle.” Yet while that’s largely true, it’s not what Paul and Sosthenes actually write to Corinth’s Christians in verse 13. They, instead, insist God “will…
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Commentary
Lent 2C
Some biblical truths resonate with me more deeply than not just other truths, but also more than those truths did even a few years ago. Among them is this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Paul and Timothy’s assertion that we “eagerly await [apekdechometha*]” the return of our Lord Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:20). For me that eagerness is…
Romans 10:8b-13
Commentary
Lent 1C
In the United States across the last decade or so, partisan political divides have been more evident in society than has been true in a very long time. But it’s not just society. Christian congregations have been riven over such issues too. A recent study showed that during and after the COVID pandemic, many congregations…
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Commentary
Transfiguration Sunday C
It may be a good thing that Transfiguration Sunday happens only once a year. After all, it’s not just that Jesus’ transfiguration is even to his closest friends among the most puzzling moments in his earthly life. It’s also that the RCL editors seemed to struggle to find passages outside of the gospels that speak…
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Commentary
Epiphany 7C
The Scriptures’ “perspicuity” is for some Christians a familiar but sometimes misunderstood concept. By it Jesus’ followers basically mean that the Holy Spirit makes clear what God wants to communicate through the Scriptures to God’s people and world. So we sometimes say the Spirit makes perspicuous the Scriptures’ central truths like God’s creation of everything…
About Doug Bratt