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Psalm 90:1-6,10, 12-17: Numbering Our Days – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 7
“Teach us to number our days,” prays the psalmist, “that we may gain a wise heart.” But what does it mean “to number our days”? A good friend of mine has recently been reading the New York Times bestselling book called Being Mortal. The author of this book is a surgeon and a professor at…
Psalm 8:1-9: God and Cosmos – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 2
Imagine that you’re lying on a beach. You’re lying on your back and your eyes sweep upward. What do you see? The mighty luminescence of the sun. A few cloud tufts wisping in the breeze. And then you look beyond. You strain your eyes as your vision sinks into the distance, the impenetrable distance that…
Psalm 100
Proper 6A
Recently when the Lectionary featured Psalm 23 as the Year A lection, I took note of the fact that for all its fame as a psalm, the 23rd psalm is actually very short, quite compact. This week we are led to Psalm 100 and it also is among the better-known songs in the Hebrew Psalter. …
Psalm 50:7-15
Proper 5A
The Lectionary has carved out the exact middle section of Psalm 50 for this Ordinary Time Sunday in Year A. It would have us skip the first half-dozen verses that summon Israel to gather before God and then the final verses that are all about a scolding of the wicked. Instead we focus on God’s…
Psalm 8
Trinity Sunday A
Probably we don’t know enough about angels to know exactly what it means for the psalmist to suggest that we human being have been made “a little lower” than the angels. We have the sense in Scripture that angels are powerful in their own way. They do the will of God. They are messengers for…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Pentecost A
Would it ruin anyone’s Pentecost if the Revised Common Lectionary had allowed Psalm 104:35a to be a part of this lection rather than coyly skipping over its line about wishing that evil and wicked people would vanish from the earth? And by itself, is that desire so terrible? Maybe it’s a luxury for people in…
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
Easter 7A
Regular readers of my commentaries here on the CEP website know that I generally frown upon the Lectionary’s tendency to delete certain portions of passages. Usually the stuff the RCL skips over pertains to judgment and the like but since we cannot get a fully rounded picture of God’s views toward sin and evil without…
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