Movies for Preaching
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…
Reading for Preaching
The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring
The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
The Cost of Discipleship
Philemon’s Problem: The Daily Dilemma of the Christian
Between Noon and Three: A Parable of Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace
God’s Spy: Malcolm Muggeridge, 1903-1990
“When Grace Arrives Unannounced”
Into that Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder
“A Kinder, Gentler Calvinism”
“You are Accepted,” in A Chorus of Witnesses
Body and Soul
Additional content related to Grace
New Years Day B: Matthew 25:31-46
Since on this New Years Day the holiday season is now just winding down, it is likely that at least a few of us watched some or all of the classic holiday movie It’s a Wonderful Life recently. In the story, a man named George Bailey despairs that his life is so worthless that it…
Job 38:1-7, 34-41
Image: To begin as a kind of summary of where Job has been, we might turn to that sage philosopher in black, Johnny Cash. In his song, I Won’t Back Down, Cash sings: I won’t back down. No, I won’t back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell But I won’t…
Psalm 78:23-29
The seven verses the Lectionary carves out of Psalm 78 for us represents about 10% of this fairly long historical psalm. But as historical overview psalms go, Psalm 78 definitely counts as one of the more downbeat ones among the lot. Although this poem recounts many positive things and events from the history of Israel,…
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…
2 Samuel 7:1-14
Spoke Too Soon In last week’s Old Testament reading, we had a shocking example of how politicians and public figures can use the Name of the Lord in vain, using it to baptize their causes and leadership. This week’s text is far more subtle but, in a sense, the transgression against the 3rd commandment remains. …
Ephesians 1:3-14
It’s ironic and sad that predestination is such a contentious issue among some of Jesus’ friends. We sense, after all, that God graciously intends it to be a source of comfort for rather than division among Christians. Thankfully, then, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson offers preachers a chance to let the Spirit help us unpack this…
Ephesians 2:1-10
Perhaps few texts, particularly among the New Testament’s epistles, are more familiar or frequently preached than this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s. As a result, preachers may wonder what the Spirit would have them “do” with Ephesians 2:1-10. In our questioning we may even hunt for a novel approach to this gospel proclamation. Such a “safari” may,…
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
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…
Luke 1:26-38
The last Sunday of Advent finally brings us to the Incarnate one himself. Well, sort of. Because this is also a calling story for Mary, the servant of God. Mary is a compelling character in the Scripture narrative. Her calling is like that of the prophets before her: a messenger from the Lord comes to…
Luke 1:46b-55
The Year B Lectionary makes Mary’s song, “The Magnificat,” an alternative Psalm lection for both the Third and Fourth Sundays in Advent. For Advent 4B the main Psalm lection is from Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26. This commentary will be on Luke 1 and Mary’s song but if you want to read a prior Advent sermon commentary…
Psalm 95:1-7a
This is another one of those lections that stops just short of the place in the psalm where there is a decisive—yet probably important—shift of tone and theme. Yes, the first seven verses of Psalm 95 are a lovely doxological celebration and a call to worship this Creator and Redeemer God for all God is…
Psalm 90:1-8 (9-11), 12
Psalm 90 is pegged in the superscription to be a psalm of Moses and though Moses’ having written this whole poem may be unlikely, there can be little doubt why this psalm has long been associated with Moses. Like Moses himself and the people he led for 40+ years, this psalm is a little bit…
Matthew 20:1-16
Jesus’s questions, on the lips of the vineyard owner, hit like bricks: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” That second question’s literal translation is, “Is your eye evil because I am good?” Though the “evil eye” image is unfamiliar…
Psalm 103: (1-7), 8-13
In past sermon commentaries here on the CEP website I have relayed the anecdote involving the author John Donne. A friend of mine who taught English once lent an acquaintance a book of collected writings by John Donne. When the person returned the book, my friend asked him what he thought of Donne’s work. “He’s…
Psalm 119:33-40
The Lectionary now and again plunks down into some seemingly random segment in the sprawling Hebrew acrostic that just is Psalm 119. This week’s Year A lection lands us in the fifth section in which every Hebrew word in the first line of these 8 verses begins with the Hebrew letter ה or He, the…
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
God’s “mercy” (eleos) is the shining center and beating heart of this Sunday’s (strangely) divided Epistolary Lesson. After all, while Paul uses the word only in this text’s second part, it’s also actually one of the unstated themes of its first half. In that way, God’s mercy serves as a kind of bridge between Romans…
Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21
The RCL had us in the heart of Psalm 145 a scant month ago for its July 9, 2023, psalm lection. Why we are looping back to some of these same verses so soon is not clear. In any event, I refer you to that sermon commentary and will not here repeat everything I said…
Psalm 119:129-136
A Bible reader could plunk down most anywhere in the Bible’s longest psalm and read pretty much the same kind of thing. For this week the Lectionary has chosen the 17th of Psalm 119’s 22 sections. Maybe as a nod toward the sheer length of this ode to God’s Law, each section corresponds to a…
Genesis 28:10-19a
It’s a shame the RCL cuts off this story in Genesis 28 before getting to the final 3 verses. Perhaps it would be a stretch to say those verses are the kicker but for certain they tell us a great deal about this rascal Jacob who is the focus of this middle part of Genesis. …
Genesis 25:19-34
Since the fulfilling of God’s covenant with Abraham hinged hugely on Abraham’s having descendants, you would think that in the childbearing department things would have gone more easily. And yet in story after story we deal with some level of infertility that becomes a deep source of concern and that God eventually is said to…
Psalm 145:8-14
The Lectionary carves out for us the middle third of this psalm and so although there are multiple (albeit overall related) themes in this poem, we will focus on verse 8 and how it sets the tone for the verses before us. “The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” …
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
What will Jesus call our generation? Do we run the same risk of refusing to join Jesus? Of rejecting the ways of God and God’s agents (like John the Baptist)? Does the Triune God look upon us and sigh, frustrated that we keep refusing to truly see and welcome wisdom, kindness, grace, and compassion for…
Psalm 100
It will never happen of course but sometimes one could wish that for certain absolutely key vocabulary words in Hebrew or Greek, all Bible translations in English (or in any language) could agree on one translation of that word that would get used consistently every time it occurs. That way readers of the translation would…
Romans 5:1-8
In the space of just two verses (2b, 3a) Paul twice says that Christians “rejoice” (kauchometha). Few Christians are likely surprised by the first cause of our rejoicing that the apostle identifies in this text. Many of Jesus’ friends, however, may be startled by our rejoicing’s second cause. So those who proclaim not just this…
Psalm 50:7-15
In an episode of the original Star Trek series titled “The Apple,” the crew of the USS Enterprise visits a planet that is ruled by a god by the name of Vaal. One inhabitant of this planet named Akuta has what looks like a small antenna attached to his neck and it is through this…
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
The Revised Common Lectionary invites those who follow it to observe the first Sunday after Pentecost as Trinity Sunday. So we’re not surprised that the RCL chooses part of 2 Corinthians 13 as its Epistolary Lesson. Paul’s second letter to Corinth’s Christians ends, after all, with what we sometimes call a “Trinitarian Formula.” However, there…
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
“And for all who are far off . . .” I guess that’s us. I guess that’s everybody. It was even, at least for a time, Peter and company. After all, the crucifixion accounts make it clear that the disciples watched Jesus die from a distance. It’s the same word as in Acts 2: makran,…
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19
Across these past few highly unsettled and unsettling years around the world, Psalm 116 has provided thoughts that are at once inspirational and aspirational. It is inspirational in its witness to God’s faithfulness in hearing our cries of distress from places of disorientation and even death. It is aspirational in that—as in all times of…
Acts 10:34-43
“He was not seen by all the people.” I’ll say. This is what Peter tells Cornelius in Acts 10 as he sums up the story arc of Jesus’ life, including the world-altering fact of his having been raised from the dead. Jesus was raised again! He arose!! But . . . by way of a…
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Although one would think the Old Testament offers up lots of compelling possible Lectionary texts for Palm/Passion Sunday, the RCL likes Isaiah 50 for this particular day and so assigns it in Years A, B, and C. It is definitely a text that tilts away from all things “Triumphal Entry” and more definitively in the…
1 Samuel 16:1-13
“Then the Lord regretted he had made Saul king.” That’s the last line in 1 Samuel 15. Apparently, however, God got over his regret sooner than did Samuel. Because as chapter 16 opens, Samuel appears to still be moping around in grief whereas God comes to him and says, “Chin up! Let’s get past this…
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…
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
One could wish that this Lectionary passage began a few verses earlier because there is delicious imagery starting in verse 11 where Moses says (in essence) to the people of Israel, “Hey, folks, this stuff God is saying to you through me about life in the Promised Land ain’t rocket science. You don’t have to…
Micah 6:1-8
For some years I co-taught a Bible course on the prophets with one of my colleagues from the Old Testament division at Calvin Seminary. My main task in that course was to talk about how to preach from the Prophets and then to grade a sermon the students write on a passage from Micah. Somewhat…
Psalm 15
In the Gospel sermon commentary for this Year A Sunday we are directed to think of who we are supposed to be as reflected in Jesus’s Beatitudes in Matthew 5. As theologians and biblical commentators have noted for centuries, if we want to know who we are to be like in order to fit inside…
1 Timothy 1:12-17
21st century culture is not, by and large, a patient one. It easily becomes impatient with the slowness of its electronic devices. Its citizens avoid friends who take too long to warm up, and politicians who take too long to enact legislation. It’s not just the 21st century’s oatmeal that we want to be “instant.”…
Hosea 11:1-11
When trying to teach seminary students some techniques for effective Bible reading, Hosea 11 is a chapter I often assign. I ask students to ponder the text and to then make a recording for me of what they would deem to be an effective interpretive reading. I am often floored by how bloodless some such…
Psalm 138
Psalm 138 has features shared by many psalms of praise. There are vows to praise God. There are references to the poet’s motivations for praising God. There is the ardent hope that eventually all the earth and all the kings and peoples of the earth will learn to praise Israel’s God as well. Like most…
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Relatively few avid readers that I know enjoy surprise endings, especially to books they’ve come to savor. After all, life seems to end all too often in tragedy. Perhaps partly as a result, most readers prefer our literature to end at least hopefully, if not happily. Sometimes, however, books end not surprisingly or hopefully, but…
Acts 16:16-34
It was certainly an interesting day! In this story we get a little occult, an exorcism, some political intrigue, an earthquake, and in the end the exuberant joy of the gospel! Your average Lord’s day it was not. As Luke narrates it for us in Acts 16, Paul and Silas’ experiences in the city of…
Acts 11:1-18
Luke is hands-down one of the best writers ever used by the Holy Spirit to compose a portion of Scripture. His narratives in the first two chapters of his Gospel alone prove as much. Other examples of narrative wizardry abound in Luke and Acts. So it is a bit odd in Acts 11 to encounter…
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
Acts 9 is one of those stories that has proven to have a pretty wide reach. Mention the phrases “Damascus road experience” or “scales falling from your eyes” to most anyone—even to people who are not regular churchgoers—and they’ll know what you mean for the most part. And to the minds of some of those…
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Comments, Observations, and Questions Call it the little Psalm that could. Call it the Psalm of stealth and surprise. Call it the Psalm that fits the Gospel bill. Why? Because out of all the 150 psalms in the Hebrew Psalter, many people have their favorites but those favorites—most anybody’s “Top 10 Greatest Hits of the…
Acts 10:34-43
Comments, Observations, and Questions When you are a devout person who wants nothing more than to serve God, then there are few shocks to the system quite as great as spiritual shocks. Just ask the apostle Peter. He knows all about this kind of thing. Because unlike some of our religious customs and taboos today—the…
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Years ago when my son was in the 8th Grade, his Christian school teacher was preparing the students to watch the whipping scene from the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ, which at the time had come out quite recently. Long before they got to viewing the actual video clip—in fact, they never…
Philippians 3:4b-13
Good gospel preaching, like faithful Christian living, always leans forward rather than backwards. While some Christians long for “the good old days,” this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson expresses the Apostle Paul’s longing for the good coming days. Of course, Philippians 3 says quite a bit about that on what Paul can look back. But the apostle…
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Comments, Observations, and Questions Gospel proclaimers who don’t have a strong working knowledge of the Scriptures’ original languages benefit from access to a good Greek and Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible. After all, English translations of the Scriptures sometimes obscure important points that the Holy Spirit makes through their original languages. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson provides (at…
Romans 10:8b-13
Comments, Observations, and Questions Some Christians at least imply that grace is what we might call a “Yesbut” phenomenon. “Yes,” they say, “We’re saved by grace alone through faith. But people also need to oppose gay marriage or voting restrictions in order to be truly saved.” Or “Yes, people who confess that Jesus is Lord…
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
I am a child of the North American 60’s who grew up watching some Saturday morning cartoons. So I can hardly hear 1 Corinthians 15:10a without hearing Popeye’s, “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam. I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.” That might seem like a rather strange onramp to a consideration…
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
There is overwhelming emphasis in this passage on how things “from above” are received here on earth. In the advent season, we remembered that we are actively waiting to receive the gift of the Word in full, and that God is actively at work to bring about his Kingdom on earth. In John’s prologue, it’s…
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…
Hebrews 4:12-16
Even adults are, in some ways, masters of hiding. We generally no longer hide in closets or behind furniture as we did when we played “Hide and Seek” as children. Yet we still manage to keep a lot of things hidden from each other – and, sometimes, even ourselves. So those who proclaim Hebrews 4…
Psalm 19:7-14
Admittedly Psalm 19 all-but begs to get split into two parts. That does not mean, however, that the Lectionary was correct to cave into doing just that. Whoever wrote this poem saw unity in it even if the rest of us ever since have had to work a bit to connect the first 6 verses…
James 5:13-20
Were “community” in the deepest sense of the word a commodity that’s traded on some kind of stock exchange, it would be soaring in value. That’s partly because of the law of supply and demand. Genuine community the word is in such short supply that the demand sometimes exceeds the supply. So many things isolated…
Psalm 15
Well, I guess you had best count me out. At least in terms of dwelling in God’s “sacred tent.” Because if the list of entry requirements in Psalm 15 are accurate, rare would be the day I could check every box. I might be able to check certain boxes on certain days and different ones…
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
I have this theory that although the actors who win the Academy Award earn the award for the entirety of their performances in the movies in question, there is often (maybe always) one key moment in those films that really cinches things. So in Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks is impressive throughout but it’s that moment…
John 6:24-35
We’re in week two of our long stretch in John 6 as Jesus introduces himself as the bread of life. This week’s Scripture passage begins in an odd spot. The lectionary skips a couple of verses that talk about how some people noticed that Jesus didn’t travel with the disciples and picks up the story…
Psalm 78:23-29
Suppose you heard a story that went something like this: And so that evening the father of these four children decided that he would respond to their hunger and their requests for something yummy to eat by going to Burger King. When the father returned home, he had all their favorites: milkshakes, loads of crispy…
Ephesians 4:1-16
E Pluribus Unum (“out of many, one”) is one of the United States’ oldest mottoes. It originally reflected the diverse American colonies and colonists’ desire to unite into one nation. However, Ephesians 4 implies that E Pluribus Unum might also be one of the Christian church’s mottoes. After all, it reminds its readers that a…
2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Talk about dramatic understatement! The presence of the Lord had been absent throughout the whole chapter of 2 Samuel 11 until the very end. But that’s only on the surface. Most everything David did here was “while no one else was looking,” but we know…
2 Samuel 11:1-15
A sermon on this text might be entitled, “The Dream Ends, The Nightmare Begins.” This text is the Continental Divide of David’s life and of the history of the monarchy in Israel. Up to this story, everything gets better and better for David, as he climbs (or, more accurately, is lifted by God’s grace) from…
Ephesians 1:3-14
Christians know that God didn’t create us to “eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die.” Yet that popular philosophy raises a number of interesting questions. It makes us wonder how God’s people should evaluate the purpose of our lives. How do we think about why God has put us here? Something in a…
Psalm 123
If the entirety of this short psalm were embedded inside a larger psalm, then at least verse 2 is the kind of verse I would expect the Lectionary to leapfrog over. As I have noted often in these sermon commentaries here on the Center for Excellence in Preaching, the Lectionary likes to skip over words…
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
[God’s] power is made perfect in weakness might be one of the most appropriate and hopeful things the inspired Paul could say to his 2021 hearers. After all, in the past 18 months we’ve surely learned if not been reminded that we are weak. Among the countless reasons why the COVID-19 pandemic may have proven…
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
This is a little text, but it is the exclamation point of the whole David story. He gets everything God promised him, and then some. The boy whom we first met when he was shepherding his father’s flock becomes the King of Israel, the shepherd of God’s flock. And he establishes Jerusalem as the capital…
Mark 5:21-43
Jesus was someone people wanted to touch and be touched by. But in the case of Jesus, such touches were about far more than the people’s desire to make contact with somebody famous. Jesus’ touch was said to have healing powers. As we can see in this story, some had concluded that Jesus was a…
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s proclaimers come, in a sense, with hands outstretched as we speak on giving. Yet if we’re going to do so, we’d better come up with some good reasons. So why should we preach or teach on what Paul calls “the grace of giving” (7b)? “What’s the matter?” some of our hearers…
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17
The end of Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson has taken on perhaps extra poignancy over the past fifteen months or so. That’s partly because, at least in the United States, the global pandemic, political partisanship and struggles for racial justice have added new chapters to the story of what its verse 16 calls “a worldly point of…
1 John 3:1-7
It keeps coming up like a bad burp. So much of 1 John is lyric. Few passages talk better about the meaning of love than ones you can find in John’s first epistle. The opening verses of this third chapter likewise are simply gorgeous, waxing eloquent on the love lavished on us by God our…
Hebrews 5:5-10
This week’s Epistolary Lesson assumes that for a relationship to exist between God and God’s people, as well as among groups and between individuals, things must be repaired and restored. However, Hebrews 5 insists that the only way that can happen is if God does it. We’re sometimes angered to hear our various leaders reveal…
Ephesians 2:1-10
Grace is what my colleague Scott Hoezee calls “the dearest piece of good news the church has for the world.” It’s also, however, what he calls, “fiercely difficult to grasp.” After all, grace has always been a source of both deep comfort and frustration, of both joy and even controversy for Christians. Jonah, for instance,…
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
If you pay attention to the liturgical year, you know that we are still in the season of Epiphany. At first reading, I wondered what the story of Jonah has to do with Epiphany. Upon further meditation, I saw that it is a revelation of the grace of God in the most unexpected places– at…
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
An acquaintance of mine used to like to end his prayers with a half-witty, half-wry final intercession. If praying at table, his prayers were mostly typical . . . until the conclusion. “Dear Lord, we thank you for this food, for this day, for your goodness to us. Be with us as we fellowship at…
John 1:(1-9), 10-18
As we come to the first Sunday of 2021, most of us are only too glad to have left 2020 behind. If on New Year’s Eve a year ago we toasted the happy arrival of a new year, this past week we probably did less of a toast to welcome 2021 and offered up instead…
Luke 1:26-38
Biblical scholars call passages like Luke 1 “type scenes.” A modern kind of “type scene” might be something like this: one evening while channel-surfing, you run across a movie already in progress. It’s obviously a Western with two cowboys standing about thirty yards apart in the middle of a dusty street. Each man is glaring…
Romans 16:25-27
I suspect that were Romans 16’s proclaimers to ask our hearers which of the Bible’s books are the most “theological,” at least some of them would answer “Romans.” Its themes of human sinfulness, righteousness from God and the need for appropriate responses to God’s grace run throughout this letter. Romans is also Paul’s letter that…
Matthew 25:14-30
“Well done, good and faithful servant.” How often haven’t we heard—or even spoken—these words at the funeral of some beloved member of the church? How often haven’t we seen these words etched onto tombstones in a cemetery or printed on the cover of the memorial folder for a funeral? This is what every believer hopes…
Psalm 90:1-8 (9-11), 12
If you bring together this week’s Psalm text with the Gospel text from Matthew 25, you may notice something curious. In Psalm 90 we are given some sober warnings about not taking God’s wrath lightly. The psalmist claims God had already afflicted his people for a long while and could do so again if they…
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
When preaching on this text, there is a huge temptation to focus on verse 15c alone. “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” That bold declaration of commitment and intention has been posted on many a front door, mine included back in the days of my young parenthood. It’s a…
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
How fitting it is that the life of Moses should end as it does! The man who spent all those days up on Mt. Sinai speaking to God face to face comes to the end of his days on Mt. Nebo speaking face to face with God. And the God who miraculously saved Moses at…
Matthew 22:1-14
In a seminar on Matthew’s gospel, Tom Long pointed out that in Matthew, it’s never a good thing to be addressed as “friend.” Every time someone is called a friend in Matthew, what follows is not pleasant! Jesus himself was referred to as a “friend” by the religious authorities in Matthew 11 but it was…
Matthew 21:23-32
A while back I heard an old Jewish witticism in which someone asks his rabbi, “Why do rabbis always answer a question with another question?” to which the rabbi replied, “Why shouldn’t a rabbi answer a question with another question?” So also in Matthew 21: Jesus side-steps the question of the Pharisees as to the…
Exodus 17:1-7
Israel is wandering in territory that is all too familiar to us—in the great wilderness of In Between, between release from bondage and possession of the Promised Land. As the New Interpreters Bible puts it, this passage is “a paradigm for the crisis of faith that occurs between bondage and well-being.” Thus it is relevant…
Matthew 20:1-16
Fred Craddock once observed that there are two kinds of sermons that are difficult to hear: bad sermons and good sermons. I think we know what he means on the latter. Because sometimes the good sermon is the one that gets under people’s skin and bothers them. Sometimes we preachers even want this, which is…
Exodus 16:2-15
This text is about grumbling and grace. To preach it powerfully, we need to hold those two opposites in dynamic tension. On the one hand, it is easy to be so tough on Israel’s ungrateful grumbling that we miss how completely human their complaints were. If we do that, we won’t see ourselves in them. …
Matthew 18:21-35
Matthew 18 reminds us of a core Christian conviction: Forgiveness is something we live, something we embody, every moment. But that only stands to reason. After all, the very foundation on which our identity as Christians is built is nothing less than the death and resurrection of Jesus and the flood of gracious forgiveness which…
Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13
It is difficult to carve up Psalm 103, though the Lectionary does its best to try doing so anyway. There really is no reason to not preach on the entire Psalm, and that is pretty much the direction my commentary will go as well. What impresses you most of all about this well-known and lyric…
Matthew 18:15-20
In some segments of the Christian church, “Matthew 18” has become rather like “Miranda Rights.” As anyone who has ever watched police dramas on TV knows, when arresting a suspect for any reason, the arresting officer is supposed to “read him his rights,” which is a set series of statements that most of us have…
Exodus 12:1-14
Since the three main characters in Exodus (Pharaoh, Moses, and Yahweh) were identified in Exodus 1-3, the narrative has been focused on the struggle with Pharaoh. In an effort to make Pharaoh “let my people go,” God through Moses has been displaying his mighty power with nine plagues. Pharaoh has been stubborn, hardhearted, to the…
Matthew 16:21-28
“In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.” That is a hymn lyric that many Christians know. But the notion of the cross towering over various temporal “wrecks” gained new poignancy when we saw on the news—and for those of us who went to Lower Manhattan in the months after…
Psalm 26:1-8
For the 1999 edition of the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, illustrator Barry Moser sketched two portraits of David. The first is of the young David, the “getting ready to slay Goliath” David. He’s young, brash. The eyes say it all. He has his whole life ahead of him and he’s confident it’s going to be…
Romans 12:1-8
“We have a cognitive bias to see ourselves in a more positive light than others see us.” So begins a provocative, insightful article published on April 26, 2004 on the Scientific American.com website. The article refers to national surveys that suggest that most business people believe they are more moral than other business people. Psychologists…
Psalm 67
If you read Psalm 67 a certain way, it could look like some example of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” or “One hand washes the other.” The poem begins with an echo of the great Aaronic benediction from Numbers 6 with reference being made to God’s face shining on people. And it…
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Your attitude towards disobedience may depend on whether you view it from a parent’s perspective or a child’s. After all, as the wonderful American preacher Fleming Rutledge notes, parents want children who obey. We want sons who don’t do things like touch hot stoves or abuse alcohol. You and I want daughters who do things…
Genesis 45:1-15
You can’t beat the Bible when it comes to telling dramatic stories in a spellbinding way. Our text for today is a perfect case in point. I’m going to use Eugene Lowry to explain that. In his classic preaching book, The Homiletical Plot, Lowry outlined the 5 movements of classic narrative using 5 interjections: Oops,…
Romans 9:1-5
Pain saturates this Sunday’s RCL Epistolary Lesson. Romans 9 nearly overflows with what Paul calls his sorrow and anguish over widespread Jewish failure to faithfully receive God’s grace. It’s grief that’s a close relative of what some of Romans 9’s proclaimers also feel. It’s similar to the sorrow we feel over the failure of some…
Psalm 119:129-136
Perhaps this would feel striking at any moment. But during this COVID-19 time and all that we have experienced in recent months, parts of this snippet of the longest psalm feel particularly odd. We have been living in largely unprecedented circumstances for most of 2020 and certainly since early March. Governors and mayors in particular…
Genesis 29:15-28
If I am Esau, sitting back home in Beersheba, the injustice of my situation is infuriating. I’ve been deceived and robbed. My life has been forever changed by the slippery ways of my little brother. My birthright is gone; so is my blessing. I’m left here with my blind old father and a mother who…
Genesis 28:10-19a
You don’t have to feel close to God for God to be near to you. You don’t have to reach out to God for God to come to you. And you don’t have to be a perfect person for God to bless you. Jacob is a case in point. We are following the Hebrew Patriarchs…
Romans 6:1b-11
Baptisms are usually joyful occasions. In the church I pastor we gather children to a place where they can watch what’s happening. Most of us end up smiling before the baptism’s all done. However, as a colleague has noted, if we really understood what’s happening when we baptize people, we might be more sober about…
Genesis 21:8-21
During Ordinary Time in the church’s calendar, we are encouraged in our walk with the God who has done great things for us. The opening line from Charles Dicken’s masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities, perfectly summarizes a particularly poignant time in Abraham’s walk with God. “It was the best of times, it was the…
Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)
We are only two Sundays into Ordinary Time, having concluded our celebration of the great festivals of the faith with Pentecost Sunday. So, it might seem a bit strange to return to Christmas today, but indulge me for a moment. It doesn’t take a brilliant biblical scholar to see parallels between this story of Sarah…
Isaiah 50:4-9a
This is going to be a disappointing Palm Sunday for any church that follows the RCL, because there isn’t much joy and celebration in the readings. Psalm 31 is filled with suffering and Philippians 2 traces the downward movement of Christ’s kenosis, while the Gospel reading from Matthew 26 and 27 is the whole passion…
John 4:5-42
Across the centuries people always gather where beverages are available. Even today we sometimes call a restaurant or lounge our favorite “watering hole” because it’s the place where we go after work to unwind with our friends over a glass of wine or something. In fact, even the phrase “scuttlebutt” has similar origins from the…
Psalm 95
Growing up in a tradition that had once upon a time been founded on Psalm singing only in church, I sang lots of psalms in my boyhood church even long, long after my Reformed tradition had added also hymns to our standard Psalter Hymnal songbook. Even as a young boy, though, I was struck by…
Psalm 121
For the second week in a row the Year A RCL has assigned a psalm that was also the Year C Psalm lection just a few months ago. So with modest modifications, here is a bit of a rerun on my recent thoughts on preaching this well-known—and very lovely—Hebrew poem. When I was a little…
Romans 4:1-5,13-17
When I was a teenager, we liked to sing a song that also had motions. With arms and legs flailing, we’d sing something like: “Father Abraham/ Had many sons;/ Many sons had Father Abraham;/ And I am one of them,/ And so are you,/ So let’s all praise the Lord.” Now once you got past…
Genesis 12:1-4a
The early chapters of Genesis show us the steady downhill slide of humanity beginning with the Fall in Eden, with some terrifying secondary falls along the way—Cain and Abel, the increasing depravity of humans resulting in the massive cleansing of the Flood, the building of Babel resulting in the scattering and confusion of the nations….
Matthew 4:1-11
Many of us have seen the bumper sticker, “Lead Me Not into Temptation: I Can Find It By Myself.” Cheeky humor aside, we know that God never actively leads us to sin and probably does not actively lead us to temptation (though this need not rule out God’s ability to test our faith). God is…
Romans 5:12-19
It’s always humbling for my wife and me to have a problem with our computer or cell phones. After all, we, on whom our sons depended for so many years, must now largely depend on them to help us. I’ll never be as technologically savvy as our thirty-something sons. Fleming Rutledge, who lent me some…
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Our text marks what may feel like a rather abrupt change in tone. After all, in the Epistolary Lesson the RCL appoints for this week, Paul portrays the Corinthian Christians quite differently than he did at the beginning of his first letter to them. In chapter 1:4-9 the apostle refers to them as graced by…
Psalm 15
In the Gospel sermon commentary for this Year A Sunday we wondered what a person would be like if you could combine all of the traits of Jesus’s Beatitudes into one individual. What would Mr. or Miss Beatitude look like? Now in Psalm 15 we see something similar: what would a person be like if…
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
The Reformed expression of the Christian faith’s many strengths have not always included Christian unity. Reformed Christians’ actions have sometimes tweaked an old saying to sound something like, “Where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name … there you have three or four Reformed denominations.” Presbyterians sometimes talk about “split p’s”. So this Sunday’s…
John 1:(1-9), 10-18
The Lectionary may get the last laugh here, and savvy preachers can curl up the corners of their mouths to join the mirth. Because here it is the first Sunday of a new year and really the first Sunday in the 2019-2020 holiday season after Christmas is officially finished. For weeks now, starting well before…
Ephesians 1:3-14
Christians know that God didn’t create us to “eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die.” Yet that popular philosophy raises a number of interesting questions. It makes us wonder how God’s people should evaluate the purpose of our lives. How do we think about why God has put us here? Something in a…
Romans 1:1-7
God saves God’s adopted children by grace alone that we can only receive with our faith in Jesus Christ. However, God always calls those whom God loves to express that faith with our obedience. Someone once said, “Make a good beginning and you’re half the way to winning.” Certainly, then, Paul seems halfway to winning…
Isaiah 35:1-10
Advent in Year A of the Lectionary’s cycle of readings is a poetry lover’s delight. From the images of mountains and military in Isaiah 2 to the plants and animals and a little child in Isaiah 11, we now come to the images of a trackless desert transformed into a verdant paradise with a superhighway…
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Jimmy Carter is now not only the oldest currently living former President of the United States but he has now lived to become the oldest former President ever. Strikingly, he has also been a former President for nearly 39 years. During those almost four decades of time, Carter’s reputation has soared but, of course, he…
Jeremiah 23:1-6
All over the world the church celebrates the reign of Christ the King today. For many of us, that is very good news because we live in places where there is huge controversy over the leadership of our countries. Whether it’s Hong Kong where protestors clash with police over increasing communist control, or it’s Canada…
Psalm 32:1-7
Most of his friends had been hanged. But despite his central role in helping to construct Adolf Hitler’s Nazi nightmare, Albert Speer somehow managed to receive from the Nuremberg trials only a 20-year sentence at the Spandau Prison in Berlin. Not long after arriving in Spandau, Speer met with the prison chaplain. To the chaplain’s…
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
I think that a really helpful way to frame a sermon on the lectionary text for today, including if you choose to cover the verses that the lection skips over, is our covenant relationship with God. A covenant is an agreement between two parties where each makes promises about how they will be to and…
Luke 18:9-14
“I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves ME!” “How vast the benefits divine which WE in Christ possess!” “Blessed assurance, Jesus is MINE!” We sing such sentiments in church all the time. So before we get all squinty-eyed in regarding the Pharisee in Luke 18 as the quintessential spiritual…
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
So here we are at the most intimate, and soul laid bare, part of Paul’s letters to Timothy. In these sermon commentaries, we’ve hinted all along about what Paul reveals in these verses—that he’s at the end of his earthly life, abandoned by fellow ministry partners, waiting on his imminent death. The lectionary selection leaves…
Luke 15:1-10
Some parables are meant to be overheard by those who are not (apparently) the primary audience. As Luke frames these parables in chapter 15, there are two audiences: there are the Pharisees who are out on the fringes, sneering at Jesus for the bad company he was keeping at table. But then there were the…
1 Timothy 1:12-17
We’re heading into a number of weeks reading Paul’s advice and encouragement to his partner in ministry, Timothy. Timothy was Paul’s closest companion in ministry, his trusted confidante, his mentee, someone he trusted to do the important work of guiding the church. Paul trusted Timothy so much that he left Timothy with the embattled Ephesus…
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
If our last reading from Jeremiah 18:1-11 offered a note of hope (and it did with that fourfold repetition of the little word “if”), there seems to be absolutely no such note in this reading. Which makes it a very tough text to preach today. Oh, if all we do is explain what the text…
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Who do you think you are? In our text for today, that question floats in the background. It’s a question that can be asked in a friendly manner, or as a challenge. In Jeremiah 18 it is asked in a challenging way. Who does God think he is? Answer- the Potter who “molds and shapes…
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
It sometimes seems like human nature to long for heroes. Today, however, it’s difficult to find heroes to whom we can steadily look up. The bright lights of things like 24-hour cable networks, YouTube and social media expose even the most famous people’s moral spots and wrinkles. So it may seem nice to have a…
Psalm 138
Psalm 138 has features shared by many psalms of praise. There are vows to praise God. There are references to the poet’s motivations for praising God. There is the ardent hope that eventually all the earth and all the kings and peoples of the earth will learn to praise Israel’s God as well. Like most…
Luke 8:26-39
What do you suppose they were all so afraid of? After all, that is the bottom line of this dramatic and startling story in Luke 8: all the witnesses and all the townsfolk were afraid. What was it that did them in, fear-wise? Was it the sight of all those dead pigs floating in the…
Romans 5:1-5
Trinity Sunday can be one of the most intimidating days on which to proclaim God’s Word. It’s not just that while Christians profess that it’s a biblical truth, the Bible never actually uses the term “Trinity.” It’s not even just that the Trinity is notoriously difficult to even begin to explain. It’s also that if…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Sample Sermon: 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…
Romans 8:14-17
Parents take better care of their attractive children than they do their ugly ones. At least that’s what an article in a 2006 edition of The New York Times reported Canadian researchers concluded after observing more than 400 parents’ treatment of their children during 14 different trips to supermarkets. They deduced that physical attractiveness makes…
John 17:20-26
One of the most creative preachers I know who always manages to approach texts in a very fresh way is Debbie Blue. For this text, she reminds us that biblically “glory doesn’t shine, it bleeds.” You can hear that sermon by clicking here. What does Jesus mean by all his talk here about “glory”? “I…
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
If we were to ask our hearers for a list of the books of the Bible that most puzzle them, at least some them would likely list both Ezekiel and Revelation. So it may intimidate those who follow the RCL to know that its Easter Season’s next to last Epistolary Lesson is a passage in…
John 21:1-19
In a recent interview with Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, Union Seminary President Serene Jones makes it plain that she does not believe Jesus physically rose again from the dead. She claimed this in part because “the gospels are all over the place” about the resurrection and she cited the fact that Mark…
Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
As I said last week in my comments on Acts 5, during the season of Easter the Lectionary switches from its customary focus on the Old Testament in the first reading, in order to follow the effects of Easter on the early church in the book of Acts. It is an ingenious way to show…
Revelation 1:4-8
With this week’s Epistolary lesson the RCL takes another step back into the muddy waters that are the book of Revelation. In fact, on this second Sunday of Easter, the RCL returns us to the Revelation 1:4-8 we just visited on the last Sunday of Year B. On this Sunday, then, we take a kind…
John 12:1-8
In Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of the characters keeps saying over and over to the character of Big Daddy that you can just smell “the mendacity in the air.” This was a play with many layers of deception and lying and it became so very nearly palpable to some…
Philippians 3:4b-14
“Are you becoming perfect?” is the provocative question with which Carole Noren begins a fine sermon (Pulpit Resource, October, November, December, 2002, p. 5) on the Epistolary Lesson the RCL appoints for this Sunday. It is an appropriate question. After all, Jesus, in Matthew 5:48, calls us to “Be perfect . . . as your…
Isaiah 43:16-21
All four of the Lectionary readings for this Fifth Sunday of Lent share a “past and future” theme. Psalm 126 talks about the restoration of Israel’s fortune in the past and calls on God to restore Israel’s fortunes in the future, so that those who “sow in tears can reap with shouts of joy.” In…
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Go ahead, try to be creative. Mess with this story if you must. Others have. Texts that are super-familiar to many people always tempt one to do something different. “Goodness, people have heard this story SOOOO many times” we think. Thus when it comes to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, folks have tried to…
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
“From now on,” Paul insists to the Corinthians in this Sunday’s RCL Epistolary Lesson, “we regard no one from a worldly point of view (16)”. Yet whenever I hear him say that, I want to ask, “Really?! Do we really no longer view people from a worldly point of view? After all, how quick aren’t…
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
It’s likely that nearly all of us have heard Christians say something like, “God never gives us more than we can handle.” Because the people who say this generally have a lot to “handle,” I’m reluctant to confront them on it. But I’m always tempted to ask them, “Where exactly does God make that promise?”…
Isaiah 55:1-9
An old farmer once told me that there are two ways to break an egg—you can smash it with a hammer in a second or you can put it under a warm mother hen for a few days. An old preacher once told me that there two ways to call a sinner to repentance and…
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
This is one of the great seminal passages of Scripture, on a par with Genesis 1, Psalm 23, and John 3:16 in importance for both Jews and Christians. But what a mixture it is, filled with peculiar ancient inheritance customs (adopting a slave to become your heir), divine promises that still shape international politics today…
Luke 4:1-13
“He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them, he was hungry.” Luke 4:2 I’ll say. This curious line in verse 2 is easy to glide past en route to the real drama to come once the devil shows up to woo Jesus to his side. At best we see this as…
Romans 10:8b-13
This may seem like a rather peculiar text to proclaim at the beginning of the season of Lent. After all, we generally think of Lent as a season of repentant preparation for our celebration of the two most important events of the Christian year, Good Friday and Easter. Romans 10, however, may seem like a…
Isaiah 6:1-13
Somewhere in my reading recently, I ran across this familiar rant about God’s invisibility. “If God really wants us to believe in him, why doesn’t he come out of hiding, you know, make himself visible, write in words across the sky, speak audibly so that everyone can hear his voice, do some miracle that would…
Ephesians 3:1-12
Most of Jesus’ followers can name their favorite attributes of God. Loving. Gracious. Holy. Almighty. Faithful. The list could go on and on. However, it would be interesting to try to calculate just how many people favor the characteristic of God that is “generosity.” In the light of the Scriptures’ emphasis on it, I sometimes…
Revelation 1:4-8
With this week’s Epistolary lesson the Lectionary takes its first step into the muddy waters that are Revelation. In fact, on this Year B Christ the King Sunday, Revelation 1:4-8 is the first step into Year C’s 6-stop journey through Revelation. It’s an appropriate first step and stop because this text the Lectionary appoints answers…
Hebrews 4:12-16
At least some Christians generally think of corporate worship as relatively sedate. I suspect that the worship services of most of us who write and read these sermon commentaries leave worshipers feeling pretty safe. However, the author Annie Dillard, in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk, writes about the dangers of meeting God in…
Psalm 130
One of the strangest books I’ve ever read is The Trial/Das Urteil by the German author Franz Kafka. The book’s opening line starkly says, “Someone must have slandered Josef K. because even though he had done nothing bad, one morning he was suddenly arrested.” The police show up at his apartment before breakfast one day…
Psalm 51:1-12
Years ago a British psychologist who worked inside Britain’s penal system described the startlingly loopy ways by which criminals attempt to sneak out from under their own crimes. He opened his article by reminding readers that in his pseudo-suicide note years ago, O.J. Simpson had the audacity to write, “Sometimes I feel like a battered…
Ephesians 2:11-22
When a text begins with a “Therefore” or a phrase like “After these things . . .”, you as a reader know you have to back up and read what came just before. Sometimes we don’t do that, of course. We have come to view the Bible as so many chopped-up chapters and verses—with convenient…
Ephesians 1:3-14
Years ago when I was a pastor, I once asked my congregation what they would think if I announced one week that from then on, every single one of my sermons would be based on Ephesians 1. Most would chalk that up to a huge mistake! Yet if you look closely at Ephesians 1:1-14, you…
Acts 3:12-19
When our family visited China a number of years ago, my wife had a hard time keeping up with our sons who all stand over 6 feet 4 inches tall. So we’d often walk a few steps behind them. As we did so, we lost count of how many people passed them, turned around and…
Numbers 21:4-9
Snakes have had, at best, a mixed reputation throughout history. Some people have associated them with healing. A snake, after all, represented Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. The modern symbol of the medical profession is also a snake wrapped around a branch. What’s more, in some passages in Scripture, snakes also have somewhat positive…
Genesis 9:8-17
21st century society seems to largely believe that people have the world and its future squarely in our own hands. They claim that if we don’t somehow make history turn out right, it simply won’t happen. Yet experience suggests that if it’s up to people to make things right, we’ve got real trouble on our…
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Sometimes actions have surprisingly pleasant results. A soccer players weakly strikes a ball that ricochets off a defender and into the goal. Or a chef blends guacamole, tuna fish and lima beans into a recipe that somehow turns out to be delicious. Other actions, however, have surprisingly unpleasant results. With perfect form a basketball player…
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
My wife and I have a friendly but persistent discussion about on what date we should begin singing Christmas carols. Were it up to her, our home’s halls would start ringing with carols the day after American Thanksgiving. Were it up to me, we’d begin singing Christmas carols roughly one week before Christmas Day. From…
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
2 Samuel 7’s David has been busy battling both Israel’s internal and external enemies. He’s also just finished “battling” his wife, Michal. So some who proclaim and hear 2 Samuel 7 feel a little like David. We come from dealing with, sometimes even “battling” people in our neighborhoods, families (and even churches). So we some…
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
The theologian Robert Jenson passed away recently. “Jens” as he was known had the ability to see through to the core of many theological and historical matters. He once made a curious point in the course of a seminar I attended one week. Jens said that in history, the Christian Church has, of course, found…
Matthew 22:1-14
In a seminar on Matthew’s gospel, Tom Long pointed out that in Matthew, it’s never a good thing to be addressed as “friend.” Every time someone is called a friend in Matthew, what follows is not pleasant! Jesus himself was referred to as a “friend” by the religious authorities in Matthew 11 but it was…
Philippians 3:4b-14
What happens to your life after you encounter something so shocking, it both retrospectively and prospectively changes everything you ever knew or thought you knew? In some ways, Paul’s words in Philippians 3 are an extended answer to such a question. As Paul begins this third chapter, it quickly becomes apparent that like so many…
Matthew 21:23-32
A while back I heard an old Jewish witticism in which someone asks his rabbi, “Why do rabbis always answer a question with another question?” to which the rabbi replied, “Why shouldn’t a rabbi answer a question with another question?” So also in Matthew 21: Jesus side-steps the question of the Pharisees as to the…
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
When I read Psalm 78, I can’t help but think about my Sunday School experience years ago. Before we would go off to our separate age-appropriate classes, the whole motley crew of us would gather in the sanctuary for a time of singing. It was my favorite part of Sunday School. And I think it…
Matthew 18:21-35
Matthew 18 reminds us of a core Christian conviction: Forgiveness is something we live, something we embody, every moment. But that only stands to reason. After all, the very foundation on which our identity as Christians is built is nothing less than the death and resurrection of Jesus and the flood of gracious forgiveness which…
Matthew 18:15-20
In some segments of the Christian church, “Matthew 18” has become rather like “Miranda Rights.” As anyone who has ever watched police dramas on TV know, when arresting a suspect for any reason, the arresting officer is supposed to “read him his rights,” which is a set series of statements that most of us have…
Matthew 16:21-28
“In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.” That is a hymn lyric that many Christians know. But the notion of the cross towering over various temporal “wrecks” gained new poignancy when we saw on the news—and for those of us who went to Lower Manhattan in the months after…
Romans 10:5-15
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
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,…
Psalm 119:129-136
Given a choice, what busy preacher would preach on this reading from Psalm 119? I mean, it is stanza #17 in an endlessly long, apparently meandering, often boring meditation on a subject that most of your listeners won’t care about at all, namely, the importance and beauty of God’s law. Some brands of Christianity don’t…
Genesis 28:10-19a
While Christians profess that God is graciously present to everything everywhere, we also have to admit that it’s sometimes hard to recognize that presence. Especially when God’s adopted sons and daughters are busy running from some kind of pursuer. Genesis 28’s Jacob is at least figuratively on the dead run. He has, after all, swindled…
Romans 8:1-11
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…
Genesis 25:19-34
Sometimes it’s precisely when we assume nothing can go wrong that things, in fact, do go quite wrong. Thankfully, then, God is graciously present in and to such things, always providentially bending them toward God’s good and loving purposes. It certainly seems like nothing can go wrong as the Old Testament text the Lectionary appoints…
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Sometimes God only seems to keep part of God’s promises. To see their complete fulfillment, we may need to squint pretty hard. Earlier in Genesis, God promised Abraham the land of Canaan, many descendants and a worldwide blessing through him. In their old age, Abraham and Sarah saw God initially fulfill that promise through Isaac’s…
Romans 6:1b-11
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…
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
“I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you . . . Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.” Those are among the closing words of the landmark “Letter from a Birmingham…
1 Peter 2:19-25
If even once you have seen the photo, you know you’ll never forget it. Not so long ago in this country, it was both legal and commonplace to post signs in public places designed to cordon off some people from others. And so a drinking fountain in a hallway might be labeled “Whites Only.” A…
Acts 10:34-43
I sometimes wonder if Peter almost choked on the words: “I now know that God does not show favoritism…” In fact, with one biblical scholar, I sometimes wonder how he ever justified this to himself, much less Jerusalem’s church, as he does later. After all, Jews like Peter had always recognized that God might show…
John 9:1-41
Now I See – A Sample Sermon It was probably the big goofy grin on his face that kept some folks from recognizing him. Oh, they’d seen him for years. But rarely had they seen him at eye level. Instead they’d long ago grown accustomed to seeing this hapless man sitting, legs akimbo, on the…
Ephesians 5:8-14
In one of the verses of this Lectionary selection Paul says that “it is shameless even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.” Apparently the Lectionary agrees because it has carved out these verses from within a wider context where Paul does name—at least a bit more specifically—what some of those deeds of darkness…
1 Samuel 16:1-13
God is in the habit of graciously turning grief into joy. Sometimes, however, the Lord does so in startling ways. So those who grieve learn to stay on the lookout for God’s gracious comfort. The Old Testament lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday begins in deep grief over the tragic character of Israel’s King…
Romans 5:1-11
Tragedy and strength. Carnage and hope. It’s the kind of paradoxical combination we Christians know about because most every time we step into a church sanctuary we are confronted with symbols that point to hope in the midst of sorrow. We see a cross, which has somehow transformed from a grim reminder of death into…
Exodus 17:1-7
At first glance, Exodus 17 may seem like just another story of Israelite bellyaching about leaving Egypt. It appears to reveal nothing new about Israel or her journey toward the land of promise’s freedom. As you might expect of people traveling through a wilderness that has no fast food restaurants or rest areas, our text’s…
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
Considering that we all love gripping courtroom dramas at the movies or on TV, it’s a wonder people don’t find parts of Romans more engaging. When you read Romans 4, for instance, it’s not the least bit difficult in your mind’s eye to picture Paul as an attorney, pacing furiously in a courtroom as he…
Matthew 4:1-11
Many of us have seen the bumper sticker, “Lead Me Not into Temptation: I Can Find It Myself.” Cheeky humor aside, we know that God never actively leads us to sin and probably does not actively lead us to temptation (though this need not rule out God’s ability to test our faith). God is not…
Romans 5:12-19
Princeton Seminary President Craig Barnes has a way of opening just about each one of his sermons with a pithy one-liner that grabs your attention even as it sets the tone for the whole sermon. In one of his sermons he opened with this: Sooner or later we all face the frightening thought that we…
Psalm 119:33-40
Psalm 119 asserts again and again (almost ad infinitum) that the Law of God is the source of joy and delight, because it gives life and light. But that’s not how the Law feels to most of us most of the time. And, as we saw last week, that’s not how Paul talks about the…
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
“We have the mind of Christ.” That was Paul’s amazing, lyric, profound final word in what we now call 1 Corinthians 2. It is this mindset alone, Paul claims, that allows us to see in the cross of Christ something other than a complete and senseless dead end. The cross is wisdom, not folly, but…
Matthew 5:13-20
At a restaurant in California recently I asked the waitress if their Cioppino was good. She assured me it was. Cioppino is a wonderful seafood stew, and the server assured me theirs contained a lot of very fresh clams, shrimp, calamari, and more. I ordered it. And . . . it lacked all salt. Seemed…
1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16)
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…
Romans 1:1-7
“To God’s beloved ones in Rome.” Such a simple, such a commonplace way to open a letter. We read such a salutation in all of the New Testament’s many epistles. And it’s easy to breeze right past it, hurry on by to get to the meat of the letter, the real important stuff about the…
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
“To that end . . .” begins 2 Thessalonians 1:11. Ah, but inquiring minds want to know to WHICH end and why? What is the antecedent to this? The Revised Common Lectionary would have you remain ignorant of that by suggesting that you politely skip over verses 5-10 so that you are left only with…
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
As most every Bible commentary would tell you, the way Paul uses Habakkuk 2:4b (“the righteous will live by faith”) in Romans and Galatians may be a bit different from how the text “sounds” and seems to function in Habakkuk 2. Habakkuk has spent most of his prophecy up to this point complaining to God…
Luke 18:9-14
“I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves ME!” “How vast the benefits divine which WE in Christ possess!” “Blessed assurance, Jesus is MINE!” We sing such sentiments in church all the time. So before we get all squinty-eyed in regarding the Pharisee in Luke 18 as the quintessential spiritual…
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider I am not sure why the Revised Common Lectionary’s series of passages from Jeremiah skips around the way it does (one week Jeremiah 32 but then next time around it’s back to chapter 29 and now we leap to chapter 31) but I think I can understand why the…
Lamentations 1:1-6
Cheery this lection is not. The New Testament sermon commentary based on Luke 17 for this week is a bit of a challenging passage and so as I noted in that article, some preachers might be tempted to swap out this week’s Old Testament reading for the Gospel one but if so, then turning to…
Luke 15:1-10
In the United States for certain—but perhaps in other parts of the world, too—it will escape the notice of very few that this Sunday falls on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the 3,000 lives that were lost in New York, in Washington, and in a field in Pennsylvania. We tend to mark…
Psalm 51:1-10
Psalm 51 will probably provoke very different reactions in most congregations. Some will be bored and skeptical because it is so familiar, and “familiarity breeds contempt.” Been there, done that, doesn’t work. Some will be scornful and dismissive because it is so out of fashion. Nobody thinks like this about sin and guilt anymore; it’s…
1 Timothy 1:12-17
In the first century—and really for a large chunk of the church’s history—most everything a given person knew had to be memorized and carried around in one’s head. There were no published materials, no pamphlets or tracts or catechisms. Not surprisingly, then, by the time the Pastoral Epistles were written it is clear that the…
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
No one knows exactly who the audience of Hebrews was. We tend to think of the earliest Christians as something of a rag-tag group made up mostly of people of modest means at best and perhaps populated primarily by poorer folks. Yet there are just enough warnings in the New Testament about not getting carried…
Luke 12:32-40
Luke 12 is like drinking from a fire hose, or maybe several different fire hoses at once with different flavors of water from each. Throughout Luke 12—and certainly in the nine verses of this particular reading from the Year C Lectionary—Jesus is doing some classic pearl-stringing in uttering one beatitude, saying, warning, or prediction after…
Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16
As Paul brings this landmark letter in for a landing, he says a whole lot of things quickly. The whole letter gets summed up in two main themes: First, we need to do our best to glorify God in how we live and in serving one another in love. Second, there is nothing to boast…
Luke 8:26-39
What do you suppose they were all so afraid of? After all, that is the bottom line of this dramatic and startling story in Luke 8: all the witnesses and all the townsfolk were afraid. What was it that did them in, fear-wise? Was it the sight of all those dead pigs floating in the…
Psalm 22:19-28
I can easily imagine a 21st century psychologist reading this Psalm for the first time and calling it “The Bi-Polar Psalm,” because of its sudden wild swings of mood. The Psalmist seems to have two totally different minds here. Are these the words of a person driven to mental instability by the clash between his…
Galatians 2:15-21
“I have been crucified with Christ so that it is no longer I who live but Christ in me.” What a soaring declaration. It’s one of the most famous lines in the New Testament. In fact, it’s so well known that it’s one of those verses that became context-less somewhere along the line. It’s a…
Romans 5:1-5
We forget it most of the time when we read Romans but the fact is that Paul was writing to a group of Christians for whom hope was no doubt in short supply. They lived in the heart of Roman darkness, right under the nose of the Caesar himself. They lived in an empire in…
Acts 16:16-34
TANSTAAFL is an acronym for the old adage, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” reportedly coined by Robert Heinlein. Quite simply, it means even if something appears to be free, there’s always some kind of catch. So your friendly neighborhood lobbyist (or pastor) may buy you lunch or dinner. However, she’s probably…
Acts 11:1-18
It’s hard for many of us to imagine Christians getting upset with each other over whom they eat lunch with. So we sometimes assume Peter’s Jewish Christian colleagues were angry with him because he shared the gospel with gentiles. You and I may assume this upset them because they thought of the gospel as belonging…
Psalm 30
In this Easter season, the lectionary readings call the church to explore and live into and celebrate the impact of Easter. With its imagery of death and resurrection, Psalm 30 is a perfect post-Easter Psalm. Its purpose is to keep the memory of our deliverance from death alive by voicing the deliverance again and adding…
Acts 9:1-6,(7-20)
The Lord is willing to do almost whatever it takes to get people’s attention. So we save both God and ourselves a lot of time and energy if we just pay attention to the Lord right away. C.S. Lewis was among the most famous Christian authors of the twentieth century. He, however, initially paid virtually…
Philippians 3:4b-14
When the cross of Christ was on the line, Paul’s language was blunt, direct, raw. As Paul begins what we call Philippians 3, it quickly becomes apparent that like so many of the congregations in the early church, so also the congregation in Philippi had come into contact with a group of Jewish teachers who…
Romans 10:8b-13
Romans 9-11 can make for tough reading. Paul is clearly tortured here where the question of the future of the Jewish people is concerned. In these three chapters it is almost as though Paul is thinking out loud, trying to write his way to a solution to a vexing theological question: now that God’s covenant…
Genesis 27
In his book Simply Christian, N.T. Wright says this about the Bible: “It’s a big book, full of big stories with big characters. They have big ideas (not least about themselves) and make big mistakes. It’s about God and greed and grace; about life, lust, laughter and loneliness. It’s about births, beginnings, and betrayal; about…
2 Corinthians 11
Pastor Heath Mooneyham thinks that many churches are too wimpy, and that’s why so few men come to church. So his congregation, the aptly-named Ignite Church in Joplin, Missouri, started giving away military-style rifles to attract men to their testosterone-fueled services. Mooneyham enticed seekers with the promise that they could “double tap a zombie in…
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider. Ever been to a Corn Maze? If you look at the maze from the outside, the perimeter, it looks like a harmless old corn field. Very different when you view it from smack in the middle, the inside, trying to find your way. And of course, the view is…
Matthew 6:5-15
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider: Helmut Thielicke preached to the church in Stuttgart in the declining days of Germany’s “reign of terror.” Screaming sirens, underground bomb shelters and fear surrounded his congregation. When Rev. Thielicke started a sermon series on this very text, his congregation was still worshipping in the Church of the Hospitallers….
Matthew 9:27-34
Comments and Observations I hate it when someone acts one way when we’re with one group of people and then is a completely different person in a different context. Perhaps that explains some of my discomfort with this passage from Matthew 9. These back-to-back healings are, in many ways, nondescript. We are given few details,…
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
All four of the lectionary readings for this second Sunday after Epiphany share a similar emphasis on God’s abundant grace to his people. Psalm 36 sings God’s praise for his love and power poured out on his people. Using gorgeous language Isaiah 62 promises the exiles that their God will restore them to their former…
Mark 8:1-13
As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said: It feels like deja vu, all over again. There are the hungry crowds, stranded in a “remote place” (much too far from the nearest McDonald’s). There is Jesus and his bleeding heart, ever “compassionate” but also (from the disciples’ point of view, at least) ever impractical. And…
Joshua 6
Comments and Observations I imagine if you were brought up in a faith tradition, at some point in your church education (Church School/Sunday School) you acted out this story from Joshua 6. I have a very vivid memory of lining up with my classmates and quietly tip-toeing around a wall of cardboard boxes six times,…
Genesis 27
Comments and Observations The future of God’s promise hangs in the balance of a family fraught with trouble. The LORD had made a promise to Abraham that he would bless his descendants, and that through them, the whole world would be blessed. Abraham’s son Isaac was the result of that promise. Now, it is for…
2 Samuel 15:1-22
Comments and Observations David’s sudden and dramatic turn from king to fugitive did not come out of the blue. A whole series of consequences from David’s actions – and inactions – now come to a terrible convergence. Perhaps it started with David’s sin against Bathsheba and Uriah. David had known that Bathsheba was married, but…
Galatians 5:1-15
Comments and Observations: Unity is often confused with uniformity. When every individual within a group has the same opinion, practices the same habits, and has the same preferences; unity seems to be natural. What happens, however, when individuals come from different racial, cultural, economic and educational backgrounds? We can be tempted to believe that unity…
John 1:(1-9), 10-18
The Lectionary may get the last laugh here, and savvy preachers can curl up the corners of their mouths to join the mirth. Because here it is the first Sunday of a new year with Christmas now officially past us by about a week-and-a-half. For weeks now, starting well before American Thanksgiving even, it’s been…
Hebrews 4:12-16
Comments and Observations As I reflected on this text, my mind went to Harriet, a member of one of my churches who, like the recipients of the letter to the Hebrews, was slip-sliding away from the church. No, Harriet wasn’t drifting back to her native Judaism, as they were. A baby boomer of my vintage,…
James 1:17-27
Comments and Observations The millennial generation in your church will love the Epistle of James, because it presents the Christian faith as less of a head trip than as a way of life. Indeed, James is so filled with practical instructions for Christian living that Martin Luther famously called it a “right strawy epistle… for…
Ephesians 1:3-14
Comments and Observations In the last two years the Revised Common Lectionary has taken us to this very text two other times, both around Christmas, that festive time in the world’s and the church’s calendar. Now we’re in Ordinary Time. Here in the United States we’ve just enjoyed the hoopla of the Fourth of July,…
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
A sermon on this text will touch nerves, because it touches money. Many preachers don’t want to touch that subject with a ten foot pole. But it’s a good thing that the lectionary confronts us with this text on this 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time, because money looms large in every Christian’s life as we…
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
This is a tough text to preach, because it is so very personal and situational. It’s all about Paul’s ministry and it is obviously addressed to a specific church (see verse 11, “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians….”). Whenever we preach on an epistle, we are reading someone else’s mail. But this particular pericope…
Ephesians 2:1-10
Comments and Observations The first three verses of this text reminded me of my two favorite criticisms of Calvinism, which has historically taken these verses as a proof text for its doctrine of total depravity. A car critic described the famously boxy Volvo as something that might have been designed by “a Calvinist with a…
Genesis 9:8-17
Sample Sermon As “Bible Stories” go, the story about Noah’s Ark has few peers. Children love this story. Kids enjoy singing all those “fun” songs about the arky-arky. They have a good time playing with the various toys and puzzles that tie in with Noah’s ark. My in-laws, for instance, once had a lovely ark…
John 1:(1-9), 10-18
Comments and Observations Most people will have to go back to work the day following this Second Sunday after Christmas. It will be Monday, January 4, 2010, and the holidays will be officially over for most of us. The kids enjoyed their two-week break but on Monday, it’s time to roll out of bed on-time,…
Preaching Connection: Grace