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Psalm 25:1-9
Proper 21A
Samuel Johnson is reported to having once said something to the effect that we need more often to be reminded than instructed. Intuitively probably most of us have a pretty solid sense of what he meant. It’s not that I don’t know the basics of knife safety when I am slicing and dicing vegetables in…
Exodus 17:1-7
Proper 21A
Israel is wandering in territory that is all too familiar to us—in the great wilderness of In Between, between release from bondage and possession of the Promised Land. As the New Interpreters Bible puts it, this passage is “a paradigm for the crisis of faith that occurs between bondage and well-being.” Thus it is relevant…
Psalm 145:1-8
Proper 20A
Yogi Berra is the one who famously coined the phrase “It’s déjà vu all over again” but of late it is the Revised Common Lectionary that seems to be making us live that out. As I looked at the Psalm selection for the Year A Proper 20 or the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, I knew…
Exodus 16:2-15
Proper 20A
This text is about grumbling and grace. To preach it powerfully, we need to hold those two opposites in dynamic tension. On the one hand, it is easy to be so tough on Israel’s ungrateful grumbling that we miss how completely human their complaints were. If we do that, we won’t see ourselves in them. …
Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13
Proper 19A
It is difficult to carve up Psalm 103, though the Lectionary does its best to try doing so anyway. There really is no reason to not preach on the entire Psalm, and that is pretty much the direction my commentary will go as well. What impresses you most of all about this well-known and lyric…
Exodus 14:19-31
Proper 19A
“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!” Well, not so fast, children of Israel. You have walked away from your enslavement in Egypt, but your former Master is chasing you down. Once Pharaoh awakened from the midnight horror of losing his oldest son and looked at his situation in…
Psalm 119:33-40
Proper 18A
The PBS show Sesame Street traditionally included as part of their educational efforts the opening line for each episode, “Today’s program is brought to you by the letter B . . .” Or it was by the letter R or E or G or whatever. That letter would then get woven throughout the episode in…
Exodus 12:1-14
Proper 18A
Since the three main characters in Exodus (Pharaoh, Moses, and Yahweh) were identified in Exodus 1-3, the narrative has been focused on the struggle with Pharaoh. In an effort to make Pharaoh “let my people go,” God through Moses has been displaying his mighty power with nine plagues. Pharaoh has been stubborn, hardhearted, to the…
Psalm 26:1-8
Proper 17A
For the 1999 edition of the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, illustrator Barry Moser sketched two portraits of David. The first is of the young David, the “getting ready to slay Goliath” David. He’s young, brash. The eyes say it all. He has his whole life ahead of him and he’s confident it’s going to be…
Exodus 3:1-15
Proper 17A
And, now, for the third and most important actor in the drama that unfolds in the book of Exodus. In last week’s reading from Exodus 1 and 2 we met the villain, Pharaoh, and the hero, Moses. Now we meet the director, producer, creator, redeemer– God, Yahweh, “I am what I am.” God is mentioned…
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