Home » Old Testament »
Psalm 22:19-28
Proper 7C
Psalm 22 certainly appears to have one of the biggest turnarounds in the Hebrew Psalter. After famously opening with a cry of divine abandonment and utter dereliction—followed by increasingly graphic descriptions of suffering and ridicule by enemies—the psalm concludes with effusive praise. The God who could not be located as the poem began returned, came…
Psalm 8
Trinity Sunday C
Some years back I was slated to preach a sermon from Hebrews 2 as part of the major annual Worship Symposium we have held for many years at Calvin University and Seminary. The portion of Hebrews 2 I preached on quotes Psalm 8 and applies some of the psalm’s language to Jesus. In particular it…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Pentecost
Let’s stipulate that the primary aim of preaching is not to condemn people or hurl about accusations and judgments. The primary aim of preaching is to proclaim the Good News that just is the Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. Even so, skipping over Psalm 104:35a as the Lectionary apparently would have us essentially do…
Psalm 97
Easter 7C
Very near the center of Psalm 97 in verse 7 we find a curious turn of phrase. It actually looks almost like some fractured syntax. First we are told that all those who worship images are put to shame. Well and good. But then comes a line without a verb and that seems almost to…
Psalm 67
Easter 6C
You don’t see it in Bible translations much anymore these days other than in a footnote. But when I was a child, I recall seeing the word Selah pretty often in the Book of Psalms in the Bible version we used at Ada Christian Reformed Church. I don’t recall if I ever asked my parents…
Psalm 148
Easter 5C
Psalm 148 gives us a lot of movement. The first four verses have us moving in a downward direction. We begin in the heights above, in the heavens. Then we move down a rung to see angels and heavenly hosts. Continuing the descent we arrive at the sun, moon, and stars. Finally we get to…
Psalm 23
Easter 4C
Not even an hour before I sat down to begin working on this sermon commentary on Psalm 23, one of my students preached an in-class sermon on Jesus’s Parable of the Lost Sheep from Luke 15. She reminded us in the course of the sermon that there are connections between that parable and the I…
Psalm 30
Easter 3C
A core tenet of the Christian faith is, to quote from the much-loved hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” “Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not, as Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.” The more fancy theological term for this is the Doctrine of Divine Immutability. Or we sometimes say God is the same…
Psalm 150
Easter 2C
Psalm 150 is the giant exclamation mark that closes out the Book of Psalms. In six swift and short verses the psalmist looks back on the previous 149 songs in the Hebrew Psalter and then as much as says, “Here’s what this whole book has been saying all along.” The psalms—each of them and all…
Psalm 114
Easter Day C
Last week our Psalm commentary was on Psalm 118, one of the options for Palm/Passion Sunday. This week the Year C Easter Psalm is 118, the only option. So for this commentary we will take up Psalm 114, which is the Psalm assigned for Easter evening. Psalm 114 is in its own way a somewhat…
Content related to Psalms