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Psalm 17:1-9
Proper 27C
Those of you who read the Psalm sermon commentaries here on CEP know that I frequently observe that different psalms fit different seasons of life. And so we always have to nuance upbeat songs of praise with the downbeat psalms of lament such that no one in the church gets the impression that true believers…
Haggai 1:15-2:9
Proper 27C
Things in the church are a little different these days. Some years ago at my alma mater it was decided that after nearly twenty-five or so years without having an on-campus chapel—a dedicated worship space—it was high time to build one. In the years since the college had moved from its original campus, most everything…
Psalm 32:1-7
Proper 26C
Most of his friends had been hanged. But despite his central role in helping to construct Adolf Hitler’s Nazi nightmare, Albert Speer somehow managed to receive from the Nuremberg trials only a 20-year sentence at the Spandau Prison in Berlin. Not long after arriving in Spandau, Speer met with the prison chaplain. To the chaplain’s…
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Proper 26C
As most every Bible commentary would tell you, the way Paul uses Habakkuk 2:4b (“the righteous will live by faith”) in Romans and Galatians may be a bit different from how the text “sounds” and seems to function in the original context of Habakkuk 2. Habakkuk has spent most of his prophecy up to this…
Joel 2:23-32
Proper 25C
This is the “happy” section of Joel but it probably needs to be seen in context. More on that at the end of this sermon commentary. For now we can see a connection to last week’s Old Testament Common Lectionary text from Jeremiah 31, which pointed to the promise of God’s giving his people a…
Psalm 84:1-7
Proper 25C
In the Calvin Seminary Chapel above and behind the pulpit area is a large clear-glass window with a cross in the center. A few years ago during a May Term preaching class in the chapel, we all noticed that a large Horned Owl had made a nest in the uppermost window pane near the top…
Psalm 121
Proper 24C
When I was a little kid, I remember Psalm 121 being read in church or sometimes at our dinner table. Back then various versions of the Bible translated that first line, “I lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help.” The sentence is in the indicative mood. Read this way, it is…
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Proper 24C
I am not sure why the Revised Common Lectionary’s series of passages from Jeremiah skips around the way it does (one week Jeremiah 32 but then next time around it’s back to chapter 29 and now we leap to chapter 31) but I think I can understand why the Lectionary saved this passage from the…
Advent 1A: Steady and Ready
There are basically two kinds of shoppers. There are those who shop with the goal of a particular purchase in mind, and those for whom the shopping itself is the goal. For the first group shopping goes something like this: You notice that the elastic on your underpants is getting fairly loose, so you head…
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Proper 23C
It’s not often that a true prophet of God ends up having prophetic egg on his face, but just that had recently happened to Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 28 a prophetic wannabe named Hananiah delivered what he declared was a true revelation from God. Hananiah made wonderfully sunny promises about Israel’s being released from captivity very,…
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