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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.
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Commentary
Easter 7C
How can we understand Christ’s promise to come “soon” that he makes not once but twice in just this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s seven verses? After all, few of our definitions of “soon” would include the two thousand years that have elapsed since he made first it. In Revelation 22 John’s dazzling visions of that coming…
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
Commentary
Easter 6C
If we were to ask our hearers for a list of the books of the Bible that most puzzle them, at least some them would likely list both Ezekiel and Revelation. So it may intimidate those who follow the RCL to know that its Easter Season’s next to last Epistolary Lesson is a passage in…
Revelation 21:1-6
Commentary
Easter 5C
Christ’s revelation to the apostle John includes what sometimes seems like an endless series of chilling images. Nearly all of them portray intense persecution, bloody battles and immense suffering. It’s a revelation that, if we didn’t know its “happy ending,” we might quit reading after about six or seven chapters. Some modern Christians assume that…
Revelation 7:9-17
Commentary
Easter 4C
“Is this heaven?” isn’t just a question an Iowa farmer poses in the movie, Field of Dreams. Readers, preachers and teachers of Revelation 7:9-17 might ask the same question of it. Does its John describe the heavenly realm as God currently configures it? Or is he describing the new earth and heaven that Jesus will…
Revelation 5:11-14
Commentary
Easter 3C
It seems in some ways appropriate that Revelation 5 begins with a sob but ends with a hymn. That, after all, doesn’t just encompass part of the range of emotions within which God’s adopted sons and daughters generally live. It also follows the arc along which God wants to move God’s beloved people. That’s why…
Revelation 1:4-8
Commentary
Easter 2C
With this week’s Epistolary lesson the RCL takes another step back into the muddy waters that are the book of Revelation. In fact, on this second Sunday of Easter, the RCL returns us to the Revelation 1:4-8 we just visited on the last Sunday of Year B. On this Sunday, then, we take a kind…
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Commentary
Easter Day C
Some biblical texts deal with rather ordinary things such stealing, eating and even caring for animals. Other texts, however, open readers’ eyes to far bigger issues. While Paul talks much about daily concerns early in his first letter to the Corinthians, he closes it by talking about bigger concerns. As Daniel J. Price to whose…
Philippians 2:5-11
Commentary
Palm Sunday C
The retired American basketball star Charles Barkley once famously said in a television commercial, “I’m not a role model … Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.” In doing so, he displayed the kind of wisdom that other public figures sometimes lack. The Epistolary Lesson the RCL appoints for…
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…
About Doug Bratt