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Psalm 51:1-12
Lent 5B
For the fifth Sunday in Lent, the Year B Lectionary serves up a quintessential Lenten-type psalm in the well-known words of Psalm 51. In preaching classes I always say to my students to not make too big of a deal over any superscriptions that accompany some psalms. In this case it is the superscription that…
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Lent 4B
Psalm 107:2 invites people to tell their stories. Ironically no sooner does that begin to happen in this poem and the Lectionary has us stop reading to jump over a lot of the stories that get told! Truth is, Psalm 107 is semi-repetitive but it is structured that way to make a point about the…
Psalm 19
Lent 3B
A friend of mine is a professional physicist and astronomer and I have always enjoyed talking with her about astronomy as I have long been an amateur astronomy aficionado. If we are blessed enough to experience it, there is nothing quite so breathtaking as being far away from any sources of light pollution so as…
Psalm 22:23-31
Lent 2B
Considering that a portion of Psalm 22 is assigned to the Second Sunday in Lent, it seems odd that the Revised Common Lectionary would select for us not the first two-thirds of the psalm that is a whopping lament but instead the sunny-side-up concluding verses. Psalm 22 almost seems like it’s two separate poems. We…
Psalm 25:1-10
Lent 1B
If the Lectionary decided for whatever the reason to not recommend all of Psalm 25, they could have at least extended this to verse 11. Since this is the reading for the First Sunday in Lent, you’d think the one verse of this psalm that is a straight up confession of sin would make the…
Psalm 50:1-6
Epiphany 6B
It is not difficult to see why the Lectionary has us go to Psalm 50 on Transfiguration Sunday in Year B. There is much here about glory and shining and the splendor—very nearly we could term it the terrible splendor—that surround Israel’s God. We are only being asked to look at the first six verses…
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
Epiphany 5B
A pastor friend of mine who is very dapper and proper in all things, including his attire, once observed another pastor show up for a summertime seminar dinner wearing a pair of shorts. My friend saw this and I noticed the muscles in his jaw tighten slightly before he wryly said, “I believe it is…
Psalm 111
Epiphany 4B
You have to like the fact that a psalm that claims God has worked to make sure his deeds are remembered is itself written as an acrostic in the original Hebrew precisely as an aid to memorizing the psalm! Beginning each of the 22 lines of this poem with successive letters in the Hebrew alphabet…
Psalm 62:5-12
Epiphany 3B
As usual when we encounter this phenomenon in the Revised Common Lectionary, it is unclear why this lection sheers off the first 4 verses. Certainly one can preach on Psalm 62 starting with verse 5 and the psalm is not particularly diminished. But why not let a sermon on this encompass the whole thing? In…
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Epiphany 2B
It may be somewhat understandable that the Lectionary would have us stop short of this psalm’s sudden shift in tone starting in verse 19. A poem that had been 100% a lyric reflection on the abiding presence of God somehow briefly morphs into a full-throated imprecation against the wicked. This seems to come up like…
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