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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…
Genesis 9:8-17
Lent 1B
Sample Sermon As “Bible Stories” go, the story about Noah’s Ark has few peers. Children love this story. Kids enjoy singing all those “fun” songs about the arky-arky. They have a good time playing with the various toys and puzzles that tie in with Noah’s ark. My in-laws, for instance, once had a lovely ark…
Psalm 30
Epiphany 6B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Psalm 30’s superscription claims it’s a song for the dedication of the temple. Yet its modern relevance seems greater than that. After all, it appears to be a song of thanksgiving to God for deliverance from a perilous situation. It doesn’t require much imagination to deduce that God has…
2 Kings 2:1-12
Epiphany 6B
Comments and Observations This story in 2 Kings 2 is strange enough as it is. But ending it at verse 12—before we get to what most commentators agree is the whole point of what can otherwise look like a pointless story—is odder still. The whole movement of this narrative appears to be in the direction…
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
Epiphany 5B
Notes and Observations Psalm 147 is one of the psalter’s five last psalms, each of which begins and ends with a “Hallelu Yah!” It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate way to close God’s people’s hymnbook. In fact, this psalm even basically begins by asserting the fittingness of praise to God. It is, insists the…
Isaiah 40:21-31
Epiphany 5B
Comments and Observations Isaiah 40 is by no means the only place in the Hebrew Scriptures to see this irony but it is on glorious display in also these verses. You can see it also in places like Psalms 8, 19, and 90, as well as in the Book of Job and other places. What…
Psalm 111
Epiphany 4B
You don’t have to read many sermons to notice that at least some pastors are vulnerable to a kind of moralism that focuses on the “do’s” and “do not’s” of the Christian faith. We sometimes want to leap right to what God wants people to do before contemplating who that God is and what God…
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Epiphany 4B
Talk about your wheel within a wheel (and perhaps within yet another wheel at that!) As Robert Jenson has pointed out, Deuteronomy is the one part of the Bible that is itself presented as a sermon. So when a pastor preaches on Deuteronomy, she is already doing a sermon based on another sermon. But now…
Psalm 62:5-12
Epiphany 3B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider The author of Psalm 62 is clearly under some kind of duress whose cause he hints at, but doesn’t specifically identify. That lack of specificity makes this psalm’s sentiment something to which anyone under some kind of duress can relate. Whether what harasses us is individual, communal or even…
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Epiphany 3B
It’s Round 2 between Yahweh and Jonah. The call to preach gets re-issued and if in Round 1 Jonah walked the opposite direction from Nineveh, this time he heads straight for it. But even well before you get to the petulant, angry Jonah of chapter 4, you just know his heart’s not in this thing….
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