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Psalm 98
Proper 28C
Reading Psalm 98 is like uncorking a well shook-up bottle of champagne. The cork rockets upward and the bubbly inside the bottle fountains forth in exuberance. We’ve all seen those locker rooms after a team wins the World Series or the Super Bowl when players spray each other with such bottles—some years ago someone finally…
Isaiah 65:17-25
Proper 28C
I love how the Lectionary brings the church year to a close. Next Sunday, of course, is the celebration of the reign of Christ the King. This Sunday we get a dramatic vision of the completion of the work of the King with this prophecy from Isaiah 65. It’s a welcome relief from our long…
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 1:5b-2:9
Proper 27C
For me, one of the greatest proofs of the Bible’s divine inspiration is its applicability to life in every era of history. The prophecy given in Haggai was written in the last period of Old Testament prophetic activity, after Israel’s return from Exile, in the year 520 BC. And yet its narrow focus on a…
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
This passage is part of an extended dialogue between the prophet Habakkuk and his God, whose ways with God’s own people are a mystery to the prophet. In the first 4 verses, the prophet passionately voices his complaint to God. In 1:5-11, God answers that complaint with a truth that Habakkuk finds unbelievable. So in…
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…
Joel 2:23-32
Proper 25C
As we near the end of Ordinary Time, the Lectionary begins to point toward Advent with prophecies that are more distinctly Messianic. After 9 hard weeks in Jeremiah which was addressed to a nation on the brink of Exile, we turn to the Minor Prophets, beginning with the one about bugs. Joel rose out of…
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.” Read this way, it is clear that our help comes somehow…
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Proper 24C
We’ve come a long way in our 9 week journey through Jeremiah (and Lamentations), from the past of his call to the distant future of the New Covenant. Last week, we heard God tell Israel how to live in Exile during the 70 years they would be in Babylon. Now we are taken to the…
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