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Isaiah 50:4-9a
Palm Sunday C
As we enter into Holy Week, the Lectionary offers us two paths, a choose-your-own-adventure of sorts. We can preach the palms or the passion. However, I note that, outside the psalms, there is only one Hebrew Scripture text and that belongs to the passion. Woke Although Lent is a season of fasting, in many ways…
Isaiah 43:16-21
Lent 5C
But you just said.. This week’s lectionary in Hebrew Scripture is replete with images and metaphors from the history of God’s people. A path through the sea recalls the people’s journey through the Red Sea, away from enslavement into the hope of the Promised Land. The destruction of the chariots and horses recalls that the…
Psalm 126
Lent 5C
The first half of this short psalm does not seem to fit the Season of Lent very well. This begins as a psalm of rejoicing and praise, remembering the time the exiles returned from Babylon. Those verses paint an almost delirious picture of happiness, laughter, and people feeling as if their dreams had at long…
Joshua 5:9-12
Lent 4C
Emerging from the Wilderness The book of Joshua begins with a season of transition among God’s people. Their leader, Moses has just died. Joshua has been installed as their new leader. His job will be to direct the people into the promised land. They cross the Jordan and are now ready to enter the land. …
Psalm 32
Lent 4C
According to the old saying, “Confession is good for the soul.” The psalmist who penned Psalm 32 would agree but would also add that not confessing is bad for soul and body. The psalmist here famously declares that for that season of his life when he refused to own up to and acknowledge the sins…
Isaiah 55:1-9
Lent 3C
Illustration “It’s not always going to be like this” You know that feeling of early friendship or love? When that other person — the object of your affection — knows you perfectly? Laughs at all your jokes? Finds you endlessly fascinating or attractive? Or maybe it’s the first time you hold that baby — a…
Psalm 63:1-8
Lent 3C
Even in the middle of the Season of Lent, the Lectionary would just as soon as have us turn a blind eye to anything having to do with punishments for sin and evil. That has to be why they lop off the final few verses of Psalm 63. True, there may be some due hesitation…
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Lent 2C
A Tribal Leader without a Tribe This text invites us to enter into Abram’s story between promise and fulfillment. Genesis 12 lays out God’s plan: to take Abram and make a great nation and a great name by which all people will be blessed. However, a lot of life has been lived between chapter 12…
Psalm 27
Lent 2C
At Calvin Theological Seminary for the past two decades we have used as a kind of homiletical template Paul Scott Wilson’s “The Four Pages of the Sermon” format. As some of you reading this may know, Wilson uses what he calls Trouble and Grace as the two primary components of a sermon. Page One (or…
The Elegant Universe
It was exactly 100 years ago in 1905 when an unknown patent clerk named Albert Einstein published a series of papers detailing what he called “special relativity.” In one fell swoop, Einstein shattered centuries’ worth of scientific theories about the fundamental nature of reality. The theories of Isaac Newton and his mechanical understanding of the…
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