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Psalm 123
Proper 9B
Recently I did a study tour through the American South with a focus on reckoning with the legacy of slavery in the U.S. Before the trip I had known, of course, about the reality and the tragedy of the slave culture of the South (and a few places more north too). But after eight full…
Psalm 30
Proper 8B
The superscriptions over various psalms are not considered canonical and may represent someone’s guess at some point as to when a certain psalm may have been composed by David (or someone else). Psalm 51 sounds like something David would have been thinking after being confronted by the prophet Nathan over his affair with Bathsheba and…
Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32
Proper 7B
Ancient Israel was never know to be a seafaring people. By Jesus’s day being a fisherman was clearly a common occupation on the Sea of Galilee but Israel did not have much experience with sailing forth on mighty sea vessels out into the Mediterranean or some such. Yet the section of Psalm 107 that the…
Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15
Proper 6B
It gets repetitive to point out the RCL’s tendency to avert the reader’s eyes from anything smacking of judgment or the destruction of the wicked and of those who pose themselves as enemies of God. But here it is again as we scoop out seven verses from the middle of what is already a somewhat…
Psalm 130
Proper 5B
Psalm 130 may be called a song of “ascents” but it begins with a descent into the depths of despair and desperation. Traditionally this poem has been tagged with the Latin phrase de profundis as those are the first two words of this psalm in the Latin Vulgate translation of the original Hebrew. But what…
Psalm 81:1-10
Proper 4B
Psalm 81 is God’s cri du coeur, the cry of the heart. When we think of God’s heart, we mostly think of its purity or power. There is a long tradition in what is now mainly the Roman Catholic tradition of the “sacred heart.” If you have ever been to Paris, you perhaps visited the…
Psalm 29
Trinity Sunday B
The Revised Common Lectionary assigns Psalm 29 for the Year B Trinity Sunday but it is by no means clear what this ode to the power of God as seen in a thunderstorm has to do with the Triunity of God. Granted there are actually not a lot of (if any) Old Testament passages that…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Pentecost
“But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more.” If you look closely at the Revised Common Lectionary Psalm assignment for Pentecost Sunday in Year B, you will notice they don’t want you to know about verse 35a. Just skip over it. Pretend it’s not there. It’s like an ugly belch…
Psalm 1
Easter 7B
As the Year B Lectionary brings Eastertide in for a landing, it returns us to the very head of the Hebrew Psalter. As we conclude our celebration of the resurrection and anticipate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Psalm 1 reminds us of what the righteousness we have in Christ looks like in…
Psalm 98
Easter 6B
“Sing to the Lord a new song.” How often? What about singing to the Lord some old songs too? Obviously that is OK since what is the Hebrew Psalter if not a collection of very old songs that we have been using and in various forms singing for millennia. Still, there can always be a…
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