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Romans 11:1-2a, 25-32
Proper 15A
If you have read my posts here on the Center for Excellence in Preaching website somewhat regularly over the years, then you know I am frequently a bit flummoxed at the text choices made by the folks who oversee the Revised Common Lectionary. Sometimes, though, when they skip over a chunk of a passage, you…
Romans 10:5-15
Proper 14A
It is easy to carve out these verses from Romans 10, sheering them off from their original context and making them only about the importance of preaching just generally. Don’t do that. We are still in this tortured section of Romans 9-11 wherein Paul’s overriding concern is to figure out what will become of God’s…
Romans 9:1-5
Proper 13A
Just five brief verses in this Lectionary reading but this short passage—all of 85 words in the original Greek—is more than enough to choke you up. It is very nearly to weep. These verses kick off a larger three-chapter section in Romans in which half of the time Paul seems to be talking to himself,…
Romans 8:26-39
Proper 12A
All of us prefer winning over losing. All the world loves a winner. “There is no prize for second place” an old adage assures us. And most of us believe that without question. Once in a while, though, the world embraces a loser. Seldom did this happen more dramatically than at the 1988 Winter Olympics…
Romans 8:12-25
Proper 11A
Theologian and musician Jeremy Begbie has pointed out that all tonal music in the Western world relies on patterns of tension and resolution. Songs begin somewhere, take us on a journey through a variety of ensuing notes and melodies, and then finally bring us back to where we started. It is a pattern of what…
Romans 8:1-11
Proper 10A
When a passage is as landmark a one as Romans 8, it is no surprise to see it pop up in the Revised Common Lectionary more than once. About half of this Ordinary Time lection was covered during Lent not long ago. In that sermon reflection I focused on what it means to live “in…
Romans 7:15-25a
Proper 9A
Very few, if any, Christians in history have ever claimed that by virtue of being a Christian, they had become sinless. Very few, if any, have ever gone through the “Confession and Assurance” portion of the weekly liturgy merely twiddling their thumbs in that they believed that part of the service did not apply seeing…
Romans 6:12-23
Proper 8A
“The wages of sin is death.” So proclaims any number of homespun billboards I have driven past over the years. Not a few church signs have sported this just-less-than good news, too. It’s the kind of thing non-Christians expect to hear from finger-wagging preachers or other pious purveyors of the Gospel. It’s what vaguely crazed…
Romans 6:1b-11
Proper 7A
Be who you are. That is Paul’s most basic message in Romans 6. Paul tells us who we are and so reminds us how we are to live from now on as a result of our true identity. Romans 6 is a landmark passage. Scholars can write (and have written) whole books on any one…
Romans 5:1-8
Proper 6A
By now many of us have heard about the recent flap regarding the well-known contemporary hymn “In Christ Alone.” Seems a certain hymnal committee wanted to formalize what a number of congregations had already done informally on their own and that is swap out language about how on the cross “the wrath of God was…
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