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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…
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…
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