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Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
New Years Day B
Sample Sermons Most of the passages in Ecclesiastes are hardly the stuff of counted-cross-stitch wall hangings. Indeed, I once read the striking observation that had Friedrich Nietzsche merely referred readers to Ecclesiastes at some point early in his writing career, he could well have spared the world much of his nihilistic blatherings! True enough, which…
Psalm 147:12-20
Christmas 2A
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider 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…
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Christmas 2A
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider You can’t accuse the Old Testament prophets of not being specific enough when it came to describing the blessings of God’s salvation! Sometimes believers today content themselves with generic or generalized descriptions of felicity in “heaven,” sometimes not advancing in their views of the New Creation much beyond the…
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Advent 3B
Who doesn’t want to preach on a passage as chockfull of lyric imagery as is Isaiah 61!? These words are so redolent of new hope and new beginnings and fresh joy that just reading this chapter aloud delivers more gospel freight than even some whole sermons that are four times as long. Of course, many…
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
Advent 2B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Psalm 85 is essentially a prayer for God to restore God’s people. It, in fact, uses the word “restore” twice. In verse 1 the poet recalls how God “restored the fortunes of Jacob.” And in verse 4 she pleads, “Restore us again, O God our Savior, and put away…
Isaiah 40:1-11
Advent 2B
Today “comfort” conjures up a cloud of images ranging from La-Z-Boy recliners to Royal Caribbean cruises. “Comfort food” is all about the personal satisfaction that can come from mashed potatoes and meatloaf. “Creature comforts” are all about having the nicest stuff even as the words “luxury and comfort” get yoked to describe things like the…
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Advent 1B
Notes and Observations You might think Psalm 80’s poet addresses Yahweh the way you’d address a napping grandfather: Wake up, Grandpa. Listen to me. I need you to help me. Yet the one to whom the psalmist speaks is no drooling, doddering geriatric. The poet clearly thinks of the Lord not only as a shepherd,…
Isaiah 64:1-9
Advent 1B
Comments, Observations, and Questions: At their honest best, biblical writers—psalmists, prophets, and others—are seldom able to call down judgment on others without also, in utter humility, admitting that when it comes right down to it, they aren’t any great spiritual shakes themselves. You see this at the end of Psalm 139: after so many verses…
Isaiah 49:8-16
Epiphany 8A
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Isaiah talked to people who wondered if anything was stable in the world. Like any number of people in our world at any given moment, so the Israelites of Isaiah’s day found themselves going through hard times in a world where the unexpected had become normal. Their country had…
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Epiphany C
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider One possible exercise for those who preach and teach the psalms is to ask what an “anti” Psalm 72 might look like. Psalm 72 is the poet’s prayer for an (unidentified) king. So like what might its opposite prayer look? For what sorts of things do we naturally ask…
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