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Psalm 32
Lent 1A
It was only a few short months ago that the Year C Lectionary assigned most of Psalm 32 as the Psalm Lection. Now here it is again assigned in its entirety for the First Sunday in Lent in the Year A Lectionary. Since I don’t have any new thoughts on this psalm since last Fall—and…
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Lent 1A
And so our Lenten journey begins. The text chosen by the RCL for this First Sunday of Lent remind us that the journey to salvation began at a tree where salvation became necessary and ended at a tree where salvation was accomplished. Genesis 3 shows us the disastrous human choice that brought death in all…
Psalm 2
Last Epiphany A
Thanks to Handel’s oratorio Messiah, Psalm 2 often gets associated with Christmas as traditionally it is during Advent that many choirs/orchestras present this well-known piece of music, including the thundering and fiery solo “Thou Shalt Break Them.” Yet here we are on Transfiguration Sunday looking at this very psalm. And if applied to the Messiah…
Exodus 24:12-18
Last Epiphany A
We come at last to the last Sunday of Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday. Epiphany began with the proclamation of Christ to the nations, represented by the Magi from the East, and it ends with an even more dramatic presentation of God’s glory on a mountain. Indeed, all of the lectionary readings for today feature a mountain…
Psalm 119:1-8
Epiphany 6A
In the world of secular music, I would guess you would be hard pressed to find many songs with titles like “I Just Love Rules!” In fact the website Ranker provided their top list of songs with the word “law” in the title but songs of the variety “I’m Lovin’ the Law” don’t seem to…
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Epiphany 6A
This is one hard text to preach. On the one hand, it seems so simple that it doesn’t even need a sermon. I mean, what more can we say about a text that is this straightforward. On the other hand, its simple straightforward message is so demanding and absolute that it will be unpalatable for…
Psalm 112:1-9 (10)
Epiphany 5A
About all I can say after reading Psalm 112 is that it’s one thing to wear rose-colored glasses but quite another to fuse those glasses to your head so you can never take them off! Psalm 112 is by no means the only poem in the Hebrew Psalter to paint a glowing portrait of what…
Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12)
Epiphany 5A
On some liturgical calendars, we are in Ordinary Time right now. But the Revised Common Lectionary helps us keep the glory shining for a bit longer by calling this the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany. The Lectionary throws us a curveball, however, with this hard-hitting text about fasting. What on earth does this social justice passage…
Psalm 15
Epiphany 4A
In the Gospel sermon commentary for this Year A Sunday we wondered what a person would be like if you could combine all of the traits of Jesus’s Beatitudes into one individual. What would Mr. or Miss Beatitude look like? Now in Psalm 15 we see something similar: what would a person be like if…
Micah 6:1-8
Epiphany 4A
In the midst of the glory of Epiphany we encounter this sobering and bracing text about God’s lawsuit against his sinful people. How is this an Epiphany text? The only connection I could find lies in that little word “showed” in verse 8. After the whole court proceeding laid out in verses 1-7, God reveals…
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