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Psalm 34:15-23 Sermon Commentary
Proper 16B
Welcome to Week 3 of Psalm 34. As noted before, the Lectionary for some reason devotes three consecutive Sundays to this relatively short psalm. What’s more, in the original Hebrew this is an acrostic poem, meaning it is meant to be memorized and seen as a unity. But despite via the Lectionary we have considered…
I Kings 8:(1, 6, 10-11), 22-30, 41-43 Sermon Commentary
Proper 16B
The last few verses of this lection strike me as much as anything. So much of the Old Testament is all-Israel all-the-time. There is warfare and defeat of other nations, dark warnings about inter-marriage with Canaanites, the threat of foreign religious practices wheedling their way into the faith of Israel. It’s easy at times to…
Psalm 34:9-14 Sermon Commentary
Proper 15B
It is not at all clear to me precisely the thinking behind dedicating three August Sundays to a single psalm. Preachers are challenged enough this month on the Gospel side of things with five weeks’ worth of sermons from John 6, all pretty much on the same theme. But now we are getting a triplet…
I Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14 Sermon Commentary
Proper 15B
My wife tells me I think too much about The Godfather, and if you have been paying weekly attention to these sermon commentaries of late, then you know this is indeed the second time in as many weeks that I have mentioned Francis Ford Coppola’s landmark 1974 film. But really, even more than last week’s…
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 Sermon Commentary
Proper 14B
I have this theory that although the actors who win the Academy Award earn the award for the entirety of their performances in the movies in question, there is often (maybe always) one key moment in those films that really cinches things. So in Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks is impressive throughout but it’s that moment…
Psalm 34:1-8 Sermon Commentary
Proper 14B
These days I am contributing two sermon commentaries a week here on the CEP website: the Old Testament reading and the Psalm. This week I worked on the Old Testament passage first: the tragic story of the unraveling of David’s household through the rebellion and later the heartbreaking death of David’s son Absalom. So having…
2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a Sermon Commentary
Proper 13B
But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Talk about dramatic understatement! The presence of the Lord had been absent throughout the whole chapter of 2 Samuel 11 until the very end. But that’s only on the surface. Most everything David did here was “while no one else was looking,” but we know…
Psalm 78:23-29 Sermon Commentary
Proper 13B
Suppose you heard a story that went something like this: And so that evening the father of these four children decided that he would respond to their hunger and their requests for something yummy to eat by going to Burger King. When the father returned home, he had all their favorites: milkshakes, loads of crispy…
John 6:1-21 Sermon Commentary
Proper 12B
Hang on to your hats, preaching partners, because we are beginning a 5-week odyssey in John 6! Granted this is an important chapter but 5 whole weeks of preaching sermons on variations of Jesus’ being the bread of life can be a bit taxing. Having skipped over the Feeding of the 5,000 in last week’s…
Psalm 145:10-18 Sermon Commentary
Proper 12B
The Lectionary likes Psalm 145 but chops it up a little differently each time. That’s a shame since the psalm is meant to be read as a single unit and presents a unified theme too. Probably for this particular Sunday the RCL chose this part of Psalm 145 because of the verse about God’s giving…
Commentaries Written by Scott Hoezee