Movies for Preaching
The Thin Red Line (1998) – 4
The Thin Red Line (1998). Written and directed Terrence Malick. Starring James Caviezel, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, and Elias Koteas. 170 mins; rated R. Metacritic: 78%; Rotten Tomatoes: 79%. Pictures worth a thousand words? Sometimes maybe, especially when mixed with music. And then, perhaps, if done well, such can skin the soul alive, so to…
Awakenings (1990)
Awakenings (1990). Written by Oliver Sacks (book) and Steven Zaillian (screenplay). Directed by Penny Marshall. Starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. Rating: PG-13. 121 minutes. Rotten Tomatoes: 88%; Metacritic 74%. So there is Leonard L. (Robert De Niro), virtually a lifelong victim of a baffling disease, later understood as a form of Parkinsonianism, apparently…
Babette’s Feast (1987) – 1
Babette’s Feast (1987). Written by Karen Blixen (short story) and Gabriel Axel (screenplay). Directed by Gabriel Axel. Starring Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Bergitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle, and Jean-Philippe Lafont. Music: Per Nørgaard. Cinematography: Henning Kristiansen. Rated G; 102 mins. Rotten Tomatoes 100%. It is a nameless place where nothing much happens, in part because it…
John Adams (2008)
John Adams (2008). HBO Mini-series. Episode VII: “Peacefield.” Directed by Tom Hooper. Starring Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti. 71 mins. Rated TV-14. Sometimes preaching choices are easy. In this instance, skip the sermon to play the following three times. Or maybe four. Old John Adams (Paul Giamatti) is pushing 90. Despite his distinguished career from…
Séraphine (2008)
Séraphine (2008). Written by Marc Abdelnour and Martin Provost. Directed by Martin Provost. Starring Yolande Moreau and Ulich Tukur. 125 mins. Unrated. Rotten Tomatoes 89%; Metacritic 84%. She certainly seems not to be the sort from whom one would expect religious wisdom of any sort, and that is true enough, at least at first glimpse. In…
Fargo (1996) – 2
Fargo, Written and Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, and Steve Buscemi. 98 minutes, Rated R. The bulk of the Coen brothers’ film Fargo is fraught with the tawdry and the evil. A car salesman’s scheme by which to swindle his father-in-law out of $1 million goes about…
The Tree of Life (2011) – 2
Written and directed by Terrence Malick. 139 mins. PG-13. Starring Jessica Chastain, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken. It’s one of the best scenes in a very remarkable film, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011). A mother (Jessica Chastain) plays and cavorts with her three boys, and what we see, all set to Smetana’s…
The Tree of Life (2011) – 1
Written and directed by Terrence Malick. 139 mins. PG-13. Starring Jessica Chastain, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken. Hugely successful architect, Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) slogs through his life in a trough of despair. Through the center of his soul runs a crevasse cut by contention with his harsh father and, even more so, lasting…
The Color of Paradise (1999)
Written and directed by Majid Majidi. Starring Hossein Mahjoub, Mohsen Ramezani, and Salmeh Feyzi. 90 mins. Rated PG. In several remarkable sequences, in utterly gorgeous landscapes of mountains and meadows, streams and sun, a blind boy exults as if he were Adam new-born in the Garden (where all is “pleasant to see” Gen.). Ten-year old…
Reading for Preaching
“Bread” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’S of Faith
“Nature,” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’S of Faith
Bright Orange for the Shroud
A Rumor of War
The Genesis Code
“Wilderness,” in The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought
“Sunday Morning with the Sensational Nightingales”
Distorted Truth: What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Battle for the Mind
“Complexity in God’s Creation”
Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad
Orthodoxy
Additional content related to Creation
Psalm 65:(1-8), 9-13
Even after a couple decades writing sermon commentaries on Revised Common Lectionary texts, it remains a mystery to me just what it means when they place some verses inside parentheses. And in the case of Psalm 65 that means just over half of the psalm is so designated. In any event there is very little…
Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18
Across its somewhat sprawling 52 verses, Psalm 89 has a little bit of everything. We begin with the first 4 verses assigned by this Year A lection with vows to praise God across the generations (something we will read again next week in Psalm 145). Then there is a whole section on the splendors of…
Acts 19:1-7: Continuing Education – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 8
We can learn something new every day. This became crystal clear to me during one academic year at Duke University. A senior Duke student was one of the scripture readers for the Sunday morning service in Duke Chapel. His job was to read the gospel lesson. On that morning, he was assigned to read a…
Psalm 90:1-6,10, 12-17: Numbering Our Days – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 7
“Teach us to number our days,” prays the psalmist, “that we may gain a wise heart.” But what does it mean “to number our days”? A good friend of mine has recently been reading the New York Times bestselling book called Being Mortal. The author of this book is a surgeon and a professor at…
Revelation 5:11-14: Hear the Animals Singing: The Bible and Genetics – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 6
There is an astonishing array of animals mentioned in the Bible. Some of them readily come to mind: sheep, goats, camels, and perhaps the most beloved animal–the donkey–one that carried Jesus to his place of birth and another that carried him closer to his death. And then there is, of course, the infamous serpent. But…
Genesis 1:26-27: The Image of God and the Secret Life – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 5
Last summer I was in Cambridge, England, for a conference. I had a free afternoon and I set out to find the Eagle Pub. The Eagle is just a short walk from the Old Cavendish Laboratory–the laboratory where some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in the 20th Century have taken place. Breakthroughs in physics, chemistry,…
Mark 10:35-45: Quantum Physics and the Nature of Eternity – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 4
In Mark’s Gospel the two brothers, James and John, ask Jesus to give them the seats of honor in the fulfilled kingdom of God. It’s not a huge surprise that it should be these two who ask such a thing. They’re known as the Sons of Thunder, a nickname that Jesus himself gave them, most…
Mark 10:17-31: What Matters Eternally – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 3
When you woke up today, what did you notice about the natural world around you? What’s the weather like? What animals and plants have you seen? What has changed since yesterday? Many of us likely start with the “news” about disasters, wars, and violence around the world. Even the weather tends to be reported with…
Psalm 8:1-9: God and Cosmos – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 2
Imagine that you’re lying on a beach. You’re lying on your back and your eyes sweep upward. What do you see? The mighty luminescence of the sun. A few cloud tufts wisping in the breeze. And then you look beyond. You strain your eyes as your vision sinks into the distance, the impenetrable distance that…
Psalm 8
Probably we don’t know enough about angels to know exactly what it means for the psalmist to suggest that we human being have been made “a little lower” than the angels. We have the sense in Scripture that angels are powerful in their own way. They do the will of God. They are messengers for…
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Pastoral Need In Sunday school, you’d be invited to make a little booklet with one page for each day, a drawing of dark and light, earth and sky, dry land and seas, sun and moon, etc. And that’s how God made the whole thing — out of nothing — one day at a time. In…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Would it ruin anyone’s Pentecost if the Revised Common Lectionary had allowed Psalm 104:35a to be a part of this lection rather than coyly skipping over its line about wishing that evil and wicked people would vanish from the earth? And by itself, is that desire so terrible? Maybe it’s a luxury for people in…
Psalm 95
We’ve all heard about stories, plays, TV shows, or movies that conclude with the proverbial “happy ending.” Probably because we prefer happy endings, we gravitate to story lines that provide one. I myself have never heard of anyone speaking about an “unhappy ending” and you get the feeling that this is because filmmakers and novelists…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b: How Many Are Your Works?: Pentecost C
You wouldn’t think a wasp could do so much damage. Unless you are allergic to bee and wasp stings, getting stung by these bugs, though briefly painful and annoying, does not generally create any lasting effect or damage. However, about 150 years ago there was one particular kind of wasp that appears to have created…
Psalm 29
Last week the Year A Lectionary had us in Psalm 147 where God’s power and presence were depicted as being inside snow storms and icy blasts. This week Psalm 29 makes the same move but shifts the weather to thunderstorms. And if you think God’s awesomeness can be seen in a wintertime blizzard, that’s nothing…
Psalm 147:12-20
In Michigan where I live, since Thanksgiving Day we have already endured our share of snow spreading out like wool and some serious icy blasts as well. One good thing about winter is that it gives you a leg up on understanding the various psalms that, like Psalm 147, use winter weather as imagery for…
Psalm 98
I come from an ecclesiastical tradition that for a long time shunned the singing of anything but settings of the 150 psalms in worship. Despite a burst of hymnody in the post-Reformation church world—think of names like Isaac Watt or the Wesleys—singing any text that was not straight out of the Psalter was verboten. Ironically…
Jeremiah 31:27-34
New Covenant For Christian readers, this Lectionary selection emerges out of Hebrew Scripture as though with giant flashing arrows and neon signs lighting up the name: “JESUS!” Here he is and here is the goal of his ministry laid out neatly before us. This notion of a “new covenant” is laid out and explained in…
Psalm 111
Psalm 111 was written by somebody who pulled out every stop on the praise organ and then let it rip! In the span of just 10 verses, God is praised up and down, forward and back. God is extolled for the works of God’s hands, for keeping covenant with God’s people, for providing food for…
Psalm 146
Psalm 146:9 directly names that famous triplet found throughout the Bible but most especially in the Old Testament: the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. If you read God’s Law and the various statutes God put into place for his people Israel (especially in Leviticus but elsewhere as well), you will see again and again…
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
The Politics of Babylon Jeremiah is coming at God’s people with every attempt he can think of in hopes of stirring them out of complacency. The emotional appeals run the gamut: grief, anger, provocation, reasoning, coaxing. He sees the people jockeying for power, attempting alliances with this super-power and then another. He observes their systemic…
Psalm 33:12-22
When I was somewhere around the age of 9 years old and my brother was 5 years old, my Dad bought us a Shetland-Welsh Pony. We had moved out to the country the year before and so had our own barn and fenced-in pasture. I had said I was interested in having a horse or…
Colossians 1:15-28
My maternal grandfather had to drop out of school after completing the sixth grade in order to help his widowed mother provide for his ten siblings. Yet while his formal education was limited, my Grandpa Steenbergen remained a lifelong learner. His almost insatiable appetite for learning made him a voracious reader. One of the books…
Psalm 66:1-9
To read Psalm 66 while bombs are dropping in Israel, Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, and maybe other places is an odd, disconcerting experience. “All the earth bows to you, they sing the praises of your name.” Really? “His eyes watch the nations, let not the rebellious rise up against him.” Is God just watching, just observing? …
Psalm 8
Some years back I was slated to preach a sermon from Hebrews 2 as part of the major annual Worship Symposium we have held for many years at Calvin University and Seminary. The portion of Hebrews 2 I preached on quotes Psalm 8 and applies some of the psalm’s language to Jesus. In particular it…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Let’s stipulate that the primary aim of preaching is not to condemn people or hurl about accusations and judgments. The primary aim of preaching is to proclaim the Good News that just is the Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. Even so, skipping over Psalm 104:35a as the Lectionary apparently would have us essentially do…
Psalm 148
Psalm 148 gives us a lot of movement. The first four verses have us moving in a downward direction. We begin in the heights above, in the heavens. Then we move down a rung to see angels and heavenly hosts. Continuing the descent we arrive at the sun, moon, and stars. Finally we get to…
Psalm 23
Not even an hour before I sat down to begin working on this sermon commentary on Psalm 23, one of my students preached an in-class sermon on Jesus’s Parable of the Lost Sheep from Luke 15. She reminded us in the course of the sermon that there are connections between that parable and the I…
Psalm 114
Last week our Psalm commentary was on Psalm 118, one of the options for Palm/Passion Sunday. This week the Year C Easter Psalm is 118, the only option. So for this commentary we will take up Psalm 114, which is the Psalm assigned for Easter evening. Psalm 114 is in its own way a somewhat…
Colossians 1:15-23: Every Creature – Day1 series: Faith and Science, part 1
Does the universe make any sense? Does the cosmos have purpose? And what about us human beings? Do we matter? Is there any way to know? Listen to some people these days, including some vocal scientists, and you will hear the answer loud and clear: “No, not really. We don’t matter. We’re too small. The…
Psalm 19
Law. Decrees. Statues. Commands. Precepts. Once the writer of Psalm 19 switched his focus from the wonder of creation to the wonder of God’s law, he dug deep into his Hebrew thesaurus to use about every synonym for “law” as he could find. But he used this variety of terms not merely because he did…
Psalm 29
This is the Sunday to observe things related to the Baptism of Jesus and each of the four assigned Year C readings tie in with baptism. The Acts 8 passage is a little bit of an outlier in that no water is involved but instead baptism is mentioned even as the Holy Spirit gets poured…
Isaiah 43:1-7
Illustration/Image: One of the blockbuster movies from this past holiday season for a movie adaptation of the musical, Wicked, the story of The Wizard of Oz as told by the “wicked” witch of the West. In both the original musical and this latest spin-off, the presence of the Wizard looms large. He is lauded with…
Psalm 147:12-20
It’s not at all clear why the Lectionary skips the first 11 verses of the 147th psalm since they contain much of the same sentiments and ideas as the final verses that the RCL does select. In any event, this is one of a number of psalms and other biblical passages where the psalmist takes…
Psalm 148
Whether it is Lectionary Year A, B, or C, if it’s the first Sunday after Christmas, you will see Psalm 148 as the psalm reading. Somebody along the way must have determined that this is such a fitting post-Christmas Day psalm that no Lectionary cycle would be complete without it. Many years that Sunday is…
Psalm 146
Psalm 146 is the Year B psalm appointed for November 10, 2024, which in the United States will be the first Sunday following the Presidential election. No doubt even those of you reading this commentary who do not live in the U.S. have been aware of this election and maybe you have even paid some…
Psalm 8
Psalm 8 swiftly sums up something that the Israelites found as amazing as anything else they could think of. Yes, the psalm is about the majesty of God and that is awesome enough. And the psalmist sees that majesty of God chiefly in the things that this great God created and most especially the wonders…
Psalm 145:10-18
Psalm 145:15 claims that the eyes of everyone look to God and when they do, God provides everyone with the food they need. It’s a curious claim considering that as a matter of fact, the eyes of plenty of people do not turn to God when they are hungry or at most any other time…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
“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 19
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…
Genesis 9:8-17
Covenants For preachers interested in holding a cohesive theme through Lent, this year’s Old Testament lectionary readings provide an opportunity to reflect deeply on the nature of God’s relationship with God’s people through covenant. This Sunday, it is his covenant not to destroy the earth, next Sunday, his choosing and making a great nation through…
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
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
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 139:1-6, 13-18
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…
Psalm 29
Last summer a tornado ripped through our area. It did not come very close to where I live but for those in and near its path, it was frightening. Whole homes were destroyed and in some places so many trees came down, you could not recognize whole neighborhoods. A man with whom I chatted this…
Psalm 148
No moment on the annual calendar gets more associated with popping champagne corks than New Year’s Eve. So it is appropriate that on this last Sunday and day of 2023 the Lectionary directs us to Psalm 148, which is in its own way a fizzing and frothing bottle of champagne in word form. It is…
Psalm 96:1-9 (10-13)
My pastor during much of my growing-up years back in Ada Christian Reformed Church in the 1970s often used the middle portion of Psalm 96 as his Call to Worship. I can still recall hearing Sunday after Sunday “Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe…
Romans 8:12-25
Those who wish to preach on this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson might benefit from spending some time reading the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. As we do so, we might note, among other things, the role that “seeing” plays in those Christian literary titans’ writings. Lewis, for example, sometimes refers to our world as…
Psalm 65:(1-8), 9-13
As I write this in July 2023, it feels at times like the world is on fire. Canada certainly has been on fire for a good bit in 2023. Canadian wildfires burning thousands of miles away have been blanketing with smoke cities as far away as Washington D.C. and also in the Midwest, giving us…
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Science has long been fascinated with both the cosmic beginning and its ending. Both involve a certain amount of speculation, though at least with the universe’s beginning there is real evidence to look at. But since the end has not yet come, there is no data to examine, and so theory and speculation are all…
Psalm 119:1-8
In the world of secular music, I would guess you would be hard pressed to find many songs with titles like “I Just Love Rules!” In fact the website Ranker provided their top list of songs with the word “law” in the title but songs of the variety “I’m Lovin’ the Law” don’t seem to…
Matthew 21:1-17: Salvation’s Hospitality – Palm Sunday A
In the summer of 1991 my wife and I spent some time traveling in Germany. One of our stops was a two-day visit to a pastor and his wife in Wittenberg. At that time, the fall of the Berlin Wall was still a very recent event. What had been the communist-dominated East Germany was still…
Psalm 148
Some years back at a worship service we used St. Francis of Assisi’s poem “Canticle of the Sun” as part of a responsive reading. There was, alas, a slight typo in the bulletin that made it sound at one point as though we were worshiping Mother Earth. This led a rather conservative member of my…
Isaiah 35:1-10
Sometimes as a preacher you are pretty sure that the best idea you could have would be simply to read the passage and then sit down. Or just read it again. And sit down. But for goodness sake, don’t start to let your own pedestrian reflections clog up a passage so full of wonder! That’s…
Colossians 1:11-20
When the people in Colosse originally heard Paul’s letter to them, they knew about the kinds of dominions about which he talks in verse 13. After all, when things went wrong in their day, their contemporaries didn’t generally blame each other. They, instead, blamed powers that their culture understood to be “in charge.” They pointed…
Psalm 98
Reading Psalm 98 is like uncorking a well shook-up bottle of champagne. The cork rockets upward and the bubbly inside the bottle fountains forth in exuberance. We’ve all seen those locker rooms after a team wins the World Series or the Super Bowl when players spray each other with such bottles—some years ago someone finally…
Isaiah 65:17-25
It doesn’t get any more lyric than this! Here in the 65th chapter of the sprawling book that just is Isaiah, we find the prophet sketching one huge vision for the renewal of all things. But like many such visions in the Old Testament—and indeed throughout the Bible—what is striking here is how utterly earthy…
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
It’s hard to read this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson without getting a lump in one’s throat. After all, it’s not just that it contains what are perhaps among the imprisoned Paul’s last recorded words. It’s also that it suggests that the apostle who has befriended to so many seems about to die virtually all alone. Acts…
Psalm 111
In a recent sermon commentary on another psalm, I observed that although the poetry of the Psalms and the wisdom literature of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes are distinct in terms of biblical literary genre, there is a lot of crossover between the Books of Psalms and Proverbs. Psalm 111 is another example of this with its…
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Silent Spring. Or better written, Silent Spring in italics as befits a book title because that was indeed the title of Rachel Carson’s well-known book that was among the first cries of the modern ecological movement. Years ago, before I knew what that book was about, upon hearing the title I pictured some serene setting:…
Psalm 8
The poet of Psalm 8 stared into the night sky and was properly dazzled at what he saw. But to put it mildly, what he did not see was a lot! Had this psalmist been able to spend a scant ten minutes looking through a telescope, he would doubtless have fainted in wonderment. Ancient astronomers…
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Are the Lectionary folks winking at us a bit with this text selection for Trinity Sunday? Obviously you don’t get any robust Trinitarian texts anywhere in the Old Testament. If it is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit you are looking for—or any combo of a couple of those at least—then Proverbs or Psalms or anywhere…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
This week, instead of a sermon commentary, I have provided a sample sermon: Psalm 104:24-34, 35b: How Many Are Your Works?: Pentecost C
Psalm 148
Some years back at a worship service we used St. Francis of Assisi’s poem “Canticle of the Sun” as part of a responsive reading. There was, alas, a slight typo in the bulletin that made it sound at one point as though we were worshiping Mother Earth. This led a rather conservative member of my…
Revelation 5:11-14
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s John reminds me of young children who tell their parents or grandparents a story that so excites them that it tumbles out of them in a string of run-on sentences that begin with “And ….” You may know the form. “I was walking home from school and I saw this big…
Isaiah 55:1-9
The Year C Revised Common Lectionary would have us stop reading and thinking about Isaiah 55 at the 9th verse. But to me that’s rather like singing just the first two stanzas of “By the Sea of Crystal” but being told you can’t sing stanza 3. But since stanza 2 ends with “Hark the heavenly…
Psalm 19
Almost 120 years ago an unknown patent clerk named Albert Einstein published a series of papers detailing what he called “special relativity.” At one fell swoop, Einstein shattered centuries’ worth of scientific theories about the fundamental nature of reality. The theories of Isaac Newton and his mechanical understanding of the universe’s functioning were swept away,…
Psalm 29
Psalm 29 is a favorite of the Revised Common Lectionary. Indeed, if you search the Sermon Commentary Library here on CEP, you will find not fewer than ten such commentaries from recent years. Psalm 29 comes up most every year on the Baptism of our Lord Sunday after Epiphany and it pops up here and…
Psalm 147:12-20
As we lurch into 2022 after another difficult year globally, we realize with a sense of startlement that we are technically now entering Year 3 of the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple years ago not a few of us hoped the worst of it would not last 3 weeks. Even 3 months seemed hard to fathom. …
Jeremiah 31:7-14
You can’t accuse the Old Testament prophets of not being specific enough when it came to describing the blessings of God’s salvation! Sometimes believers today content themselves with generic or generalized descriptions of felicity in “heaven,” sometimes not advancing in their views of the New Creation much beyond the wispy, cloudy, ethereal realm that New…
Psalm 148
When I was a pastor, I liked every sixth year when Christmas Day fell on a Sunday. First, it eliminated the need for an extra service and second, it eliminated conversations with leadership as to whether to hold any extra services in case . . . well, in case Christmas Day fell on a Saturday. …
Psalm 93
As I have noted before here on CEP, at Calvin Seminary we use Paul Scott Wilson’s “Four Pages of the Sermon” method as the grammar and structure of sermons. A key part of that is locating what Wilson calls “Trouble in the Text.” What is the tension, the crisis, the question, the issue at hand…
Psalm 119:1-8
In the world of secular music, I would guess you would be hard pressed to find many songs with titles like “I Just Love Rules!” In fact the website Ranker provided their top list of songs with the word “law” in the title but songs of the variety “I’m Lovin’ the Law” don’t seem to…
Job 38:1-7, 34-41
Why did this happen? Why didn’t God prevent this? “Pastor, why did this happen? “Pastor, where is God?” A child dies, a good person is killed, a freak accident takes the life of someone who was unspeakably precious to us, and we are left to wonder why. And if we’re honest as pastors, we just…
Job 1:1, 2:1-10
Comments, Observations, and Questions As most everyone knows, the Book of Job is essentially one long disquisition on the age-old question of theodicy: Why does a good God let bad things happen to good people? The conversations that take place around this question eat up the bulk of this book until finally God comes on…
Psalm 92:1-4,12-15
What’s in verses 5-11? This lection from Psalm 92 is one of many RCL texts that clearly skips a certain section of a passage, forcing the curious Bible student to wonder why a chunk gets leapfrogged over. Psalm 92 is hardly too long for a single reading or sermon. Yet the Lectionary deletes almost exactly…
John 3:1-17
I wonder what Nicodemus was thinking about when he walked home that night. My guess is that it wasn’t the Doctrine of the Trinity! Yet this is the Year B passage assigned for Trinity Sunday. So what did he ponder? No clue. John doesn’t tell us. That’s ironic seeing as, according to John’s reportage at…
Psalm 29
You can find an article with sermon ideas for Psalm 29 a total of 9 times in the Sermon Commentary Archive here on CEP. That is because in all three Lectionary cycles of Years A, B, and C, Psalm 29 is always assigned for the first Sunday after Epiphany/Baptism of Christ and for Trinity Sunday….
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
You have to look pretty close to figure out what brings the latter portion of Psalm 104 to the fore on Pentecost Sunday. But then you read verse 30 and perhaps you are reading a translation that capitalizes the word “Spirit” there, and then you connect the Lectionary dots. That capital “S” signals that the…
1 John 3:16-24
“Love” is a word everyone knows and everyone understands. Or so we think. But if that is so, why is it that when we are called to preach on “love,” it can feel so daunting? Maybe it’s because we use the same word for so many things. It would not be unusual, for instance, to…
Psalm 114
[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 19
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…
Genesis 1:1-5
This First Sunday after Epiphany celebrates the Baptism of Jesus, that spectacular epiphany of his glory as he began his public ministry. All of the Lectionary readings for this Sunday were chosen because they have to do with water, whether the primeval waters of Genesis 1 or the waters of the Mediterranean that spawn a…
Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13)
“A scribe to the Lord . . .” At least that is what I heard my minister say when I was a young boy attending a church in Ada, Michigan. Rev. Angus MacLeod began more morning worship services than not with that portion of Psalm 96 that repeats the call to “ascribe” to the Lord…
Matthew 14:22-33
If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. That was the title some years back of a popular book written by John Ortberg. And the title reflects what is doubtless the most common “take” on this story. Over and again this well-known story comes to mean something like…
Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18
Most of what makes Psalm 89 such an interesting poem cannot be seen if you restrict yourself to just the 8 verses the Lectionary has carved out of the psalm’s full 52 verses. Because this poem that begins in such an upbeat tone and with such a full-throated desire to sing praise to God for…
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
As we come to the end of the great celebrations of the church year and begin Ordinary Time, the RCL takes a Sunday to focus on the Trinitarian God who has done these great things. The readings from the Gospels and from the Epistles are clearly Trinitarian, the first naming the Triune God in connection…
Psalm 147:12-20
Two rather striking features to this psalm leap out at you. First, there is the singularly positive, sunny statements about how God has strengthened Jerusalem, given peace within Israel’s borders, and just generally provides a warm and safe environment for God’s people. The second striking feature is the celebration at the end of Psalm 147…
Colossians 1:11-20
What a weird place to start our lectionary selection for Reign of Christ Sunday and the close of Ordinary Time. We get the last few verses of Paul’s thanksgiving prayer section, then all of the Christ hymn, but not the verses that describe the community’s reconciliation. If it’s “application” that we’re after, wouldn’t verses 21-23…
Psalm 98
Reading Psalm 98 is like uncorking a well shook-up bottle of champagne. The cork rockets upward and the bubbly inside the bottle fountains forth in exuberance. We’ve all seen those locker rooms after a team wins the World Series or the Super Bowl when players spray each other with such bottles—some years ago someone finally…
Isaiah 65:17-25
I love how the Lectionary brings the church year to a close. Next Sunday, of course, is the celebration of the reign of Christ the King. This Sunday we get a dramatic vision of the completion of the work of the King with this prophecy from Isaiah 65. It’s a welcome relief from our long…
Psalm 111
In a recent sermon commentary on another psalm, I observed that although the poetry of the Psalms and the wisdom literature of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes are distinct in terms of biblical literary genre, there is a lot of crossover between the Books of Psalms and Proverbs. Psalm 111 is another example of this with its…
Colossians 1:15-28
If the first four verses of this Sunday’s RCL’s Epistolary Lesson don’t make its preachers and teachers’ heads spin at least a bit, we’re probably not paying enough attention to them. In verse 15, after all, Paul insists, probably no more than 20 years after Jesus ascended into the heavenly realm, he’s “the image of…
Psalm 66:1-9
A bit cheeky. A goodly dose of chutzpah. A tad forward. You have to admire the psalmists who on many occasions are not the least bit adverse to ordering the whole world to praise the God of Israel. Make no mistake: all those “Praise the Lord” lines in so many of the psalms are in…
Psalm 8
The poet of Psalm 8 stared into the night sky and was properly dazzled at what he saw. But to put it mildly, what he did not see was a lot! Had this psalmist been able to spend a scant ten minutes looking through a telescope, he would doubtless have fainted in wonderment. Ancient astronomers…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
This week, instead of a sermon commentary, I have provided a sample sermon: Psalm 104:24-34, 35b: How Many Are Your Works?: Pentecost C
Revelation 21:1-6
Christ’s revelation to the apostle John includes what sometimes seems like an endless series of chilling images. Nearly all of them portray intense persecution, bloody battles and immense suffering. It’s a revelation that, if we didn’t know its “happy ending,” we might quit reading after about six or seven chapters. Some modern Christians assume that…
Revelation 5:11-14
It seems in some ways appropriate that Revelation 5 begins with a sob but ends with a hymn. That, after all, doesn’t just encompass part of the range of emotions within which God’s adopted sons and daughters generally live. It also follows the arc along which God wants to move God’s beloved people. That’s why…
Psalm 19
Almost 115 years ago an unknown patent clerk named Albert Einstein published a series of papers detailing what he called “special relativity.” At one fell swoop, Einstein shattered centuries’ worth of scientific theories about the fundamental nature of reality. The theories of Isaac Newton and his mechanical understanding of the universe’s functioning were swept away,…
Psalm 148
We have but one Sunday after Christmas this year as Epiphany proper is already next week on January 6. So the Lectionary decided to let loose with all the post-Christmas praise it could muster by choosing Psalm 148. Talk about relentless! This Psalm is one long string of the imperative hallelu yah or “Praise Yahweh,”…
Job 1:1, 2:1-10
After a month of looking at Wisdom literature from a woman’s point of view, we will now spend a month in the decidedly masculine book of Job which wrestles with the question that has confounded the wisest women and men in the world. Why should a righteous person suffer in a world ruled by a…
Psalm 19
Digging Into the Text: Like Psalm 23, 103, and 145, Psalm 19 holds a special place in the hearts of believers as one of the most beloved of the Psalms. It’s a poetic and theological tour de force. While its very depth and scope make it a formidable text for preaching, the preacher should not…
Psalm 111
We almost certainly do not study the works of the Lord enough. Psalm 111 is not one of the better known poems in the Hebrew Psalter but it packs a powerful punch of praise and adoration. Just generally it is a meditation on God’s works in both creation and redemption. It celebrates the mighty things…
John 6:1-21
Hang on to your hats, preaching partners, because we are beginning a 5-week odyssey in John 6. Granted this is an important chapter but 5 whole weeks of preaching sermons on variations of Jesus’ being the bread of life can be a bit taxing. Having skipped over the Feeding of the 5,000 in last week’s…
Isaiah 25:6-9
Easter Sunday may not seem like an ideal time to compare God’s kingdom to Isaiah 25’s lavish feast. After all, many of those who proclaim and hear the Old Testament lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday will spend at least some of Easter preparing, eating and cleaning up food. Yet nearly every culture and…
Hebrews 5:1-10
It should count as a bit of an irony that just beyond the end of the assigned lection in Hebrews 5 we find the writer giving his readers a bit of a rebuke. “You probably don’t understand what I just wrote,” verse 11 essentially begins, “and that’s too bad because by now you should be…
Psalm 29
The Revised Common Lectionary chooses this Psalm for this first Sunday after the Epiphany of Christ in all three years of its reading cycle. Clearly the Lectionary sees Psalm 29 as a parallel to the baptism of Jesus, because in both the voice of God rings out over the waters. Psalm 29 shows us an…
Genesis 1:1-5
Questions about the “beginning” (1) of the universe, earth and people intrigue at least some of us. So God’s people sometimes turn to passages like Genesis 1:1-5 for answers to those questions. Yet wise people also ask whether Genesis is even interested in those increasingly divisive issues. To honestly answer questions about creation’s beginnings, God’s…
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
Psalm 85 is a fine choice for this second Sunday of Advent. Anticipating the Gospel reading from Mark 1 in which John the Baptist begins to announce that salvation is near, verse 9 declares, “Surely his salvation is near those who fear him.” In the same vein, verse 13 concludes the Psalm with words that…
2 Peter 3:8-15a
“Like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” So some Christians have characterized ecological stewardship efforts within the church. And it is not difficult to discern why parts of this passage in 2 Peter 3 have been used to prop up the idea that Christians who work to save the environment are battling a lost…
Psalm 19
One scholar of the Psalter calls Psalm 19 “the problem child Psalm.” He calls it that because it doesn’t fit any of the established genres of the Psalter. Only Psalms 1 and 119 are like Psalm 19. Further, some scholars are pretty sure that Psalm 19 was originally two Psalms, a nature hymn (verses 1-6)…
Matthew 14:22-33
If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. That was the title some years back of a popular book written by John Ortberg. And the title reflects what is doubtless the most common “take” on this story. Over and again this well-known story comes to mean something like…
Psalm 65:(1-8), 9-13
In my last church, we used Psalm 65:9-13 as the Old Testament reading for every Thanksgiving Day worship service. Its description of harvest bounty fit the time of year so well, and its ascription of praise to God for that bounty fit the theme of our national Day of Thanksgiving. But this harvest Psalm is…
Psalm 8
On this Trinity Sunday, the other three Lectionary readings can legitimately be used for sermons on that great Mystery. Both Matthew 28 and II Corinthians 13 explicitly mention Father (God), Son, and Holy Spirit. Genesis 1 is a bit more difficult. Although many scholars express reservations about such exegetical movements, an enterprising preacher can work…
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Questions about the age of the universe, earth and the human race intrigue at least some 21st century Christians. Some wonder just how God guided the development of creation and its creatures. So God’s people sometimes turn to passages like this Genesis 1 and 2 for answers to those hard questions. However, it’s important to…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Many scholars suggest that we could use Psalm 104 to put environmentalist spin on Pentecost, because of verse 30. “When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.” Imagine a Pentecost version of the secular Christmas carol. “Have yourself a merry little environmental Pentecost!” I agree with that…
Psalm 66:8-20
On this Sixth Sunday of the Easter season, Easter is frankly fading from our minds. The trumpets are stored away, the lilies have long been consigned to the trash, and we’re moving on to Ascension Day and Pentecost. So it’s a good thing to preach on Psalm 66 today, because it reminds us that every…
Psalm 29
Anyone who regularly preaches on the Lectionary knows all too well that the there are times when the choice of readings doesn’t make sense. That is not the case for this First Sunday after Epiphany when we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. The “main” reading from the Gospels is, of course, about the baptism of…
Isaiah 35:1-10
With the words, “This text shouldn’t be here,” my colleague Barbara Lundblad begins a thoughtful presentation on Isaiah 35. After all, as she points out, it’s not just that this text doesn’t address anyone by name. It’s also that it almost immediately follows a poem that’s full of images of creational disaster: “Edom’s streams will…
Isaiah 65:17-25
The “heavens and … earth” that Isaiah 65 describes are clearly “new.” After all, they’re radically unlike the ones we know here and now. In fact, the prophet’s picture of them is so earthly and yet different from what we now experience that it almost makes us weep with longing for what Isaiah’s vision symbolizes….
Psalm 113
Psalm 113 is a thing of beauty, both in its form and in its content. It is a beautiful example of the forms of Hebrew poetry, consisting of three perfectly rounded stanzas: the call to praise Yahweh in verses 1-3, the praise of Yahweh’s majesty in verses 4-6, and the praise of Yahweh’s mercy in…
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
I suspect that were Jeremiah 4 not on the Lectionary schedule, few preachers and teachers would be willing to tackle it. After all, among other reasons, relatively few of us like to talk about the kind of divine judgment it so graphically describes. What’s more, its grim apocalyptic imagery resists easy understanding and application. Of…
Luke 13:10-17
When the truth humiliates you, you are humiliated indeed. Worse, when a truth so obvious that it can be stated in a sentence or two humiliates you, then your shame is profound. It’s one thing if a philosopher builds an elaborate argument to disprove some point you had made but it’s another thing if a…
Colossians 1:15-28
“To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” That is the final verse of Colossians 1 and it pretty much says it all. “Strenuously contend” is what the latter half of this opening chapter conveys, and then some! From Colossians 1:15 through Colossians 1:23, Paul writes exactly…
Psalm 8
Throughout the Christian church this is the Sunday to celebrate the Trinity. Our other readings for today are richly Trinitarian (John 16:12-15 and Romans 5:1-5) or at least suggestive of the Trinity (Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31). Psalm 8? Not so much. In Year A of the lectionary cycle Psalm 8 is paired with Matthew 28, and…
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
On even the most “ordinary” Sunday it can be difficult to preach and teach from the book of Proverbs. It may seem well nigh impossible to do so on Trinity Sunday. It isn’t just that Proverbs that doesn’t mention the Trinity. After all, the term is found nowhere in the whole Bible. It’s also difficult…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
This Psalm gives the enterprising preacher a fresh alternative for a Pentecost sermon, because it focuses on the Spirit’s work not in redemption (as do the other readings for Pentecost Sunday), but in creation. Though a number of contemporary scholars think the mention of the Spirit in verse 30 is not a reference to the…
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
On the very day when I slated for myself the task of writing up this sermon commentary article on the end of Revelation, I did some thinking about Ezekiel as part of an Old Testament Prophets course I am co-teaching this semester. As my colleague Amanda Benckhuysen pointed out, there is a lot of intertextuality…
Psalm 148
On this fifth Sunday of Easter, we continue our exploration of the impact of Christ’s resurrection. After a lovely look at Easter comfort in Psalm 23 last Sunday, our reading from Psalm 148 brings us back to the theme of celebration. In Psalm 148 we move from the intimate comfort of “The Lord is my…
Revelation 21:1-6
Among the best experiences I’ve ever had in life was snorkeling over coral reefs off the Caribbean island of Bonaire. My wife and I visited the island several times and each time continued to add to our “life list” of different types of fish and other sea creatures we had seen. Rainbow Parrotfish, Blue Tangs,…
Isaiah 55:1-9
“Come and get it!” is a phrase that traditionally resonated with hungry North Americans. After all, we generally link it with an invitation to eat what someone has prepared. So when we hear “Come and get it!” we may think of Mom, standing on the front steps, hollering for us to come home for supper….
Isaiah 62:1-5
These first verses of Isaiah 62 are like a geyser erupting in hopefulness and wild abundance. This is like a prophetic fireworks display with a never-ending grand finale as color and light fills the skies, eliciting a long string of “Ooohs” and “Ahhhs” from those seeing the spectacle. This is one of those passages so…
Psalm 29
Psalm 29 may feel a little hard on ears that are tired and worn down by all the recent holidays’ noise. It is, after all, a “noisy” hymn of praise that the poet fills with the sounds of music, thunder, wind and even the sound that earthquakes make. It’s a psalm that the psalmist also…
Psalm 147:12-20
“January has always seemed to be something of a letdown,” writes James Limburg. After all, even if, as T.S. Eliot writes, “April is the cruelest month,” January is perhaps the coldest month, at least in many parts of North America. Christmas’ excitement generally allows North Americans to look past December’s sometimes-wintry weather. But now the…
Psalm 148
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider This is a stirring call to praise that’s strikingly reminiscent of Francis of Assisi’s beautiful hymn, “All Creatures of our God and King.” It’s an invitation to “all creatures of our God and King” to lift up their “voices and with us sing, alleluia, alleluia.” In fact, Psalm 148…
Hebrews 10:5-10
Sometimes you just have to wonder where the inventors of the Revised Common Lectionary got their ideas for the choices they made. I mean, here we are, 5 days away from Christmas, surely one of the most pregnant times in the church calendar. The other readings for this Fourth Sunday of Advent are clearly about…
Job 1:1, 2:1-10
Comments and Observations: Lately I have been doing some reading of books that try to teach people how to become better writers. Specifically these are books to help aspiring novelists hone the necessary skills that might one day help them to garner that much-coveted acceptance letter from a publisher. One essay that I read recently…
Psalm 24
Scholars call Psalm 24 a processional liturgy that celebrates Yahweh’s entrance to Zion. They speculate that the poet composed it for either David’s bringing the ark into Jerusalem as reported, for example, in 2 Samuel 6, or a festival that commemorated that event, or the return of the ark to Jerusalem and its temple after…
John 3:1-17
Comments, Observations, and Questions I wonder what Nicodemus was thinking about when he walked home that night. My guess is that it wasn’t the Doctrine of the Trinity! Yet this is the Year B passage assigned for Trinity Sunday 2015. So what did he ponder? No clue. John doesn’t tell us. That’s ironic seeing as,…
Psalm 29
Psalm 29 is a hymn of praise to the God of creation. It’s a rather “noisy” psalm that the poet fills with the sounds of praise, thunder, wind and even the sound that earthquakes make. It’s a psalm that the psalmist also fills with vivid images of angels around God’s throne, flashes of lightning, twisted…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Psalm 104 is a lovely, lyrical hymn of praise to God the Creator and Sustainer. It offers what William P. Brown calls “a grand tour of God’s creation and maintenance of the cosmos.” It glides from verses 2b-9’s description of God’s first acts of creation to verses’ 10-30’s description…
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
Notes and Observations Psalm 147 is one of the psalter’s five last psalms, each of which begins and ends with a “Hallelu Yah!” It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate way to close God’s people’s hymnbook. In fact, this psalm even basically begins by asserting the fittingness of praise to God. It is, insists the…
Preaching Connection: Creation