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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.
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Commentary
Proper 15C
Hebrews’ author devotes most of chapter 11 to an exploration of what it means to live and die by faith. But he doesn’t call his readers to “fix their eyes” (12:2) on any of the people we sometimes “heroes and heroines of the faith.” Hebrews’ author only invites his readers to “keep our eyes” on…
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Commentary
Proper 14C
We sometimes assume that we can recognize an alien when we see him (he’s green and has antennae) or at least see her citizenship papers (they say citizen of Canada, or Mexico, the United States, or some other country of origin). Yet when Hebrews’ author speaks of people like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and others…
Colossians 3:1-11
Commentary
Proper 13C
Few issues roil the 21st century North American church more than those that revolve around human sexuality. North American Christians spend much time arguing about extra-marital sex, same sex attraction and marriage, as well as gender dysphoria. Churches and denominations are dividing, whether formally or informally, around the appropriateness or inappropriateness of various sexual behaviors….
Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)
Commentary
Proper 12C
The sacrament of baptism isn’t just a source of almost endless controversy among Jesus Christ’s friends. It’s also sometimes vulnerable to distraction from its importance. When, for example, Reformed Christians think of infant baptism, we sometimes focus on cute babies and their outfits, as well as beaming parents and grandparents. When Christians who practice “believers’…
Colossians 1:15-28
Commentary
Proper 11C
“Sedition” and “seditious” are concepts to which at least some Americans have paid a lot of attention over the past eighteen months. Some are asking themselves and each other whether a mob’s January 6, 2021’s storming of the United States Capital building was an act of sedition. At least some Americans who wonder that also…
Colossians 1:1-14
Commentary
Proper 10C
Elements of this week’s Epistolary Lesson are faintly reminiscent of Huck Finn’s experience with prayer. In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck recounts how his foster mother, Miss Watson, tried to teach him to pray. “Miss Watson … took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray…
Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16
Commentary
Proper 9C
“It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up” has spilled from the lips of at least some of us. Sometimes, of course, we try to cloak our braggadocio in the mantle of false humility. But few of us easily resist the temptation to brag about ourselves or people who are dear to us. Thugs…
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Commentary
Proper 8C
It comes up repeatedly in our conversations with our Jewish friends and acquaintances. “How can you live without God’s law to guide your life?” The observant Jews we know and love can’t imagine living without the structure Torah gives them. “Doesn’t it lead to some kind of anarchy?” is one form of the questions they…
Galatians 3:23-29
Commentary
Proper 7C
Occasionally the Revised Common Lectionary’s choice of where to begin and end a Lesson isn’t just puzzling. It’s also downright bewildering. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is a case in point. After all, the chasm between verses’ 23-25 and 26-29 may seem to be a kind of grand canyon that has no bridge that crosses it….
Romans 5:1-5
Commentary
Trinity Sunday C
A quick glance at the church year’s calendar may make gospel proclaimers’ pulses race. Trinity Sunday has, after all, come again. It may make proclaimers’ palms sweat not just because, as the New Testament scholar Beverly Gaventa to whose commentary I owe a great deal for this commentary, notes, “reference to the Trinity is itself…
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