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Psalm 119:1-8
Proper 26B
The Aleph section of Psalm 119 is a little all over the place in some ways. As many of us know, the longest of all the Psalms is divided up into 8-verse units that follow the ordering of the Hebrew alphabet with each line of each segment beginning with the same letter of the alphabet. …
Psalm 126
Proper 25B
Perky. That’s the word that came to mind after I once again read this short, effervescent psalm. It’s perky. It bubbles over with joy and hopefulness. It is about a reversal of fortune that generates almost giddy happiness and joy. It is about dreams coming true—dreams that for too long seemed to be unlikely at…
Psalm 91:9-16
Proper 24B
If you have been reading my sermon commentaries here on the CEP website over the years, then you have no doubt sensed that I hold a very high view of Scripture as God’s Word. I take it more than seriously and I reverently honor its inspired nature and believe it is infallible in all the…
Psalm 90:12-17
Proper 23B
The Lectionary has us picking up just the tail end of Psalm 90 this week. It is a curious poem. It opens with a lyric consideration of how God had been his people’s dwelling place—their home—from generation to generation. But then in the middle section there is a shift in tone as a rather fearsome…
Psalm 8
Proper 22B
Psalm 8 swiftly sums up something that the Israelites found as amazing as anything else they could think of. Yes, the psalm is about the majesty of God and that is awesome enough. And the psalmist sees that majesty of God chiefly in the things that this great God created and most especially the wonders…
Psalm 19:7-14
Proper 21B
We all recognize that rules and regulations are simply a part of life. Mostly, however, we are only too happy to dispense with recitations of such things as quickly as possible. Anyone who has ever flown on a commercial airline know that before the flight can begin, the flight attendants have to run through their…
Psalm 54
Proper 20B
Psalm 54 tells a story in just seven short verses. Like most if not all of the stories the psalms tell, it is a very generic tale. We have no precise clue who the psalmist is, who his enemies are, exactly what actions the enemies take, or what God does to earn the praise he…
Psalm 116:1-9
Proper 19B
One of the benefits of the fact that psalms are not tied to any obvious specific set of circumstances is that they can be applied to a wide variety of experiences whether or not those exactly match whatever any given psalmist was talking about. In the case of Psalm 116, one could surmise this was…
Psalm 146
Proper 18B
As we often note here on the CEP website and in our various sermon commentaries on the Psalms, we use the word “Hallelujah” as an expression of praise. For us it is synonymous with the sentiment, “I am praising God right now!” And sometimes we use it as a way to express gratitude and relief,…
Psalm 15
Proper 17B
We could summarize and simultaneously contemporize Psalm 15 this way: Who may dwell with God on God’s holy mountain? The one who stays off social media. Or at the very least the one who does not do on social media what altogether too many other people have been doing in the years since Facebook and…
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