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Psalm 85:8-13
Proper 10B
To be honest, Psalm 85 is a little all over the place. The first four verses reflect a time when God forgave Israel for some transgressions and restored them. But then the next set of verses seems to indicate Israel went backwards, sinned again, and so found itself under the wrath of God again. And…
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Proper 10B
There is no question what this text is about—the ark of the covenant. It is mentioned over and over, nine times in all. So is David; his name comes up even more. David brings the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem. That’s what this text is about. But, so what? Why was that so important…
Psalm 123
Proper 9B
If the entirety of this short psalm were embedded inside a larger psalm, then at least verse 2 is the kind of verse I would expect the Lectionary to leapfrog over. As I have noted often in these sermon commentaries here on the Center for Excellence in Preaching, the Lectionary likes to skip over words…
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Proper 9B
This is a little text, but it is the exclamation point of the whole David story. He gets everything God promised him, and then some. The boy whom we first met when he was shepherding his father’s flock becomes the King of Israel, the shepherd of God’s flock. And he establishes Jerusalem as the capital…
Psalm 30
Proper 8B
Psalm 30 is almost singularly upbeat in its incessant exaltations of God. But the discerning reader and preacher will notice that underneath all this praising there has been a history of pain. References are made to having gone down to the depths, to sinking into the pit, to enemies eager to gloat over the psalmist’s…
2 Samuel 1:1,17-27
Proper 8B
This is a strange and tough text to preach on, until you look at it through the lens of our contemporary situation, particularly in America. One of the hard realities of this past year was “the presence of [our] enemies,” as David put it in his most famous Psalm. Let me put this text in…
Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32
Proper 7B
The Lectionary assigns Psalm 107 now and again—the most recent time was just earlier this year in March—but chops it up somewhat differently each time. It never assigns the whole psalm, even though thematically it all hangs together. Because if you read the entire psalm, you will discover it is a curious historical retrospective on…
1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49
Proper 7B
As we continue to trace the development of the monarchy in Israel and use that history to reflect on the relationship between human leadership and divine sovereignty in our own lives, we come to this famous story of David and Goliath. It is the second chapter in the story of David’s rise to power in…
Psalm 92:1-4,12-15
Proper 6B
What’s in verses 5-11? This lection from Psalm 92 is one of many RCL texts that clearly skips a certain section of a passage, forcing the curious Bible student to wonder why a chunk gets leapfrogged over. Psalm 92 is hardly too long for a single reading or sermon. Yet the Lectionary deletes almost exactly…
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Proper 6B
This old story about God’s choice of David as the new king of Israel fairly bubbles with contemporary relevance, especially in America. I wrote the first draft of this Sermon Commentary just a few weeks after the inauguration of the Biden/Harris team. The words of Shakespeare’s witches of Eastwick described the national mood perfectly: “Double,…
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