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Psalm 114
Easter Day B
[Note: The Year B Lectionary assigned Psalm 118 for both Passion Sunday and Easter. I chose to post on that for Passion/Palm Sunday last week and the Easter evening Psalm for this week. If you want to see last week’s post on Psalm 118, click here.] Psalm 114 is a curious choice for Easter Evening…
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Lent 6B
You wouldn’t know it to look at it. Yet it’s true: a portion of Psalm 118—specifically verses 22-23—is the single most-oft quoted Old Testament text in the New Testament. Not Psalm 23. Not Psalm 100. Not some well-known story like Abraham sacrificing Isaac or David and Goliath. Nope. It’s little old Psalm 118. That has…
Psalm 51:1-12
Lent 5B
This semester I am a co-instructor in Calvin seminary’s Psalms & Wisdom Literature course. Last week I did a class session on tips for preaching the Psalms. One warning I always give—based on past experience with student sermons that went off the rails—is never to preach the superscriptions. Whether it is simply the common superscription…
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Lent 4B
The Lectionary is giving us but a small sampling of Psalm 107 by carving out the first three verses and then a half-dozen from the center of the larger poem. If you read the entire psalm, you will discover it is a curious historical retrospective on various experiences that various unnamed people have had at…
Psalm 19
Lent 3B
Since I began teaching preaching about 15 years ago, one of the things I find myself most often urging students to do is pay good attention to their transitions. Segues, metonymy, giving listeners little verbal hooks inside the sermon to help folks track the sermon’s forward progress: all of these things are vital to good…
Psalm 22:23-31
Lent 2B
In this week’s Gospel sermon article here on the CEP website I noted the dramatic experience of Peter in Mark 8 when he falls about as far as a person can fall within the span of minutes. Peter goes from being blessed to the heavens by Jesus to being cursed to the depths of hell…
Psalm 25:1-10
Lent 1B
Samuel Johnson is reported to have once said something to the effect that we need more often to be reminded than instructed. And perhaps the RCL thinks so too since Psalm 25 was assigned a few months ago near the end of September. Probably what I wrote then—most of which is the content of this…
Psalm 50:1-6
Epiphany 6B
Read just the first six verses of Psalm 50—as the Lectionary would have us do apparently—and it all looks grand. It is a powerful summation of the almighty power of Israel’s God. The imagery is majestic and even fierce. God sallies forth from Mount Zion cloaked in splendor with tempests and fires and bright flashes…
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
Epiphany 5B
Psalm 147 is a favorite of the Revised Common Lectionary. It seems to crop up at least once in each liturgical year and this is now the second time it has occurred in the still-new Year B cycle. This was the psalm—albeit with a slightly different configuration of verses—just one month ago on January 3. …
Psalm 111
Epiphany 4B
Psalm 111 is a shook-up bottle of champagne when the cork flies off: it is effervescent, effusive, and thus it is delightfully over the top in most every way. It’s one of those poems that tempts one to plant tongue firmly in cheek to ask the psalmist, “Don’t hold back: tell us what you really…
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