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Isaiah 50:4-9a
Lent 6B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Parts of this lection are pretty well known, particularly since in the Passion section of his oratorio Messiah, G.F. Handel lifted up some of these words and set them to music. (I have personally always been struck by the way Handel turned the word “plucked” into a two-syllable word…
Psalm 51:1-12
Lent 5B
Comments and Questions Psalm 51 is what Old Testament scholar James Mays calls a “liturgy of the broken heart.” Like so many of the psalms, it’s the prayer of someone who is in deep trouble. Here, however, the psalmist doesn’t complain to God about God or other people. He admits he alone has caused the…
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Lent 5B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Everybody likes what follows the words “The days are coming” in verse 31 of this passage. A bit more dodgy and difficult to understand, however, is what follows that identical phrase in verse 27. Because there the last thing mentioned is that if ever it had been true that…
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Lent 4B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Psalm 107 is a thanksgiving liturgy that worshipers probably recited at a festival in Jerusalem’s temple. Some congregations still use it or a modified form of it at Thanksgiving worship services. It also serves as the basis for a number of well-known hymns, including Martin Rinkart’s stirring “Now Thank…
Numbers 21:4-9
Lent 4B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider You really cannot appreciate this passage from Numbers 21 without paying attention to the surrounding context. In the first three verses of this chapter, we get a tiny narrative snippet about a time the Israelites got knocked around by some Canaanite king named Arad. A few Israelites got nabbed,…
Psalm 19
Lent 3B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider C.S. Lewis once called Psalm 19 “the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.” So it’s no wonder lyricists have set a number of beautiful interpretations of it, including “The Heavens Declare Your Glory” and “God’s Glory Fills the Heavens,” to music…
Exodus 20:1-17
Lent 3B
Growing up I heard the “Reading of the Law” every single Sunday morning in church. In our Calvinist stripe of the Reformed tradition, this recitation of the Ten Commandments served the dual purpose of at once convicting us of our sin but also of laying out the rule of gratitude for how we should live…
Psalm 22:23-31
Lent 2B
Notes and Observations Christians who read this psalm, particularly during the season of Lent, can hardly do so without hearing Jesus’ groan as he dangles between heaven and earth on the cross. After all, both Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46 quote him as praying verse 1’s, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”…
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Lent 2B
Comments and Observations At first blush, Genesis 17 may not seem like a real likely Lenten text. But stay tuned in this sermon commentary and eventually we’ll come around to seeing how this text fits in with Lent after all and with also the Mark 8 passage assigned for this Second Sunday in Lent of…
Psalm 25:1-10
Lent 1B
Notes and Observations The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has suggested one helpful approach to preaching and teaching the psalms is to ask what an “anti-psalm” might look like. What, in other words, might be the opposite tone of that expressed by a particular psalm, whether it expresses trust, praise, complaint or something else? So…
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