Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Epiphany 6A
I’m not sure God cares much whether we choose, for example, to eat oatmeal or fresh fruit for breakfast. However, God does very deeply care, in some cases even more than we naturally do, about some of our choices. This might provide Deuteronomy 30’s preachers and teachers an opportunity to explore with worshipers and students…
Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)
Epiphany 5A
God expects our lifestyle to reflect our worship. That is to say, God’s not pleased when God’s children act one way on Sunday, but quite a different way during the rest of the week. Isaiah 58 oozes frustration. Clearly Israel is frustrated. After all, she assumes that she takes God very seriously. Israel claims to…
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Epiphany 6B
This text has taken on a very personal character for members of my church, its food pantry ministry and me, especially in the past ten months. After all, 2 Corinthians 4’s description of the “veiled” nature of the gospel wasn’t, at least originally, alluding to all non-Christians. Chapter 3 makes it quite clear that Paul…
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Epiphany 4B
If last Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s call to “those who have wives [to] live as if they have none” seemed daunting to proclaim, this Sunday’s Lesson’s treatment of the issue of eating food sacrificed to idols may seem nearly overwhelming. It may, after all, feel as though Paul is speaking more to African or Asian churches…
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Epiphany 3B
Like most of this Commentary’s readers, I’ve attended a number of weddings. I’ve even officiated at a few. But I can’t remember ever hearing or preaching a wedding message based on this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. At one level that’s understandable. This short text, after all, doesn’t yield easy interpretations that would fit well into a…
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Epiphany 2B
Christians sometimes assume people’s souls are the only places where God works. God’s people, however, who add Christian freedom to that assumption sometimes end up with unbiblical notions about our bodies. Of course, Jesus Christ graciously freed his adopted siblings from having to earn our salvation by obeying God’s law. Yet that leaves the question…
Acts 19:1-7
Epiphany 1B
The woman who told me with a puzzled look on her face, “I don’t think anyone here has the Holy Spirit,” had been part of a church community I pastored for about six months. Yet in that short time she’d concluded that members of our church didn’t have the Holy Spirit. So she sadly left…
2 Peter 1:16-21
Last Epiphany A
To paraphrase an old cliché, for the RCL’s preachers and teachers, “It’s a good thing Transfiguration Sunday comes but once a year.” After all, it can be challenging enough to proclaim the gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration. The challenge may become even greater for those who choose to proclaim the Epistolary Lesson the RCL appoints…
1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
Epiphany 5A
Already on the first pages of J.K. Rowling’s first “Harry Potter” book we knew she was going to come up with a whole little universe of wild and funny things. The first such gadget we encounter is Dumbledore’s “deluminator.” It was the opposite of a cigarette lighter—you did not use the deluminator to light a…
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Epiphany 4A
In a fine sermon commentary on this text (from which I drew numerous ideas for this commentary), Scott Hoezee suggests that there’s a danger in spending as much time in church and around Christians as some preachers and teachers do. It’s that this whole Christianity business all starts to make too much sense to us.…
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