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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.
Philippians 3:4b-14
Commentary
Lent 5C
“Are you becoming perfect?” is the provocative question with which Carole Noren begins a fine sermon (Pulpit Resource, October, November, December, 2002, p. 5) on the Epistolary Lesson the RCL appoints for this Sunday. It is an appropriate question. After all, Jesus, in Matthew 5:48, calls us to “Be perfect . . . as your…
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Commentary
Lent 4C
“From now on,” Paul insists to the Corinthians in this Sunday’s RCL Epistolary Lesson, “we regard no one from a worldly point of view (16)”. Yet whenever I hear him say that, I want to ask, “Really?! Do we really no longer view people from a worldly point of view? After all, how quick aren’t…
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Commentary
Lent 3C
It’s likely that nearly all of us have heard Christians say something like, “God never gives us more than we can handle.” Because the people who say this generally have a lot to “handle,” I’m reluctant to confront them on it. But I’m always tempted to ask them, “Where exactly does God make that promise?”…
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Commentary
Lent 2C
We generally think of citizenship as, for instance, American, Canadian or whichever geographic country we call “home”. That citizenship not only identifies us but also shapes at least some of our attitudes and behavior. The Epistolary Lesson the RCL appoints for this Sunday, however, is not about national, but heavenly citizenship. That citizenship too, writes…
Romans 10:8b-13
Commentary
Lent 1C
This may seem like a rather peculiar text to proclaim at the beginning of the season of Lent. After all, we generally think of Lent as a season of repentant preparation for our celebration of the two most important events of the Christian year, Good Friday and Easter. Romans 10, however, may seem like a…
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Commentary
Last Epiphany C
Sometimes the lessons the Lectionary appoints for a particular Sunday seem about as loosely tied as some teenagers’ tennis shoes. On this Transfiguration Sunday, however, that’s not the case. It doesn’t take much work to recognize the themes that run through the Old Testament, Psalm, Gospel and Epistolary lessons. Each in its own way reflects…
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Commentary
Epiphany 7C
It may be a good thing that the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday comes up only about “once in a blue moon.” Its sections of 1 Corinthians 15 contain, after all, what N.T. Wright, to whose book, Paul for Everyone: I Corinthians, (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2003) I owe great deal…
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Commentary
Epiphany 6C
Few things are sadder than the sight of people who place their hopes in something that can’t deliver that for which they hope. Think, for example, about the sad specter of people lined up to buy lottery tickets, pinning their hopes for wealth on a generally worthless piece of paper. Or think about terminally ill…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Commentary
Epiphany 5C
In the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday Paul describes his theology of the resurrection. Yet he insists that the Corinthians’ confusion about it isn’t just one among many problems that he’s already addressed. Lack of clarity about the resurrection isn’t like confusion about, for example, sexuality, food offered to idols and lawsuits…
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Commentary
Epiphany 4C
In the more than twenty years that I’ve ministered with and to the church I currently serve, I’ve never preached on 1 Corinthians 13. Now I remember why. Not only is it so lovely that it nearly defies description. It’s also like a figurative lit stick of dynamite. So I take comfort in the assertion…
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