Movies for Preaching
The Apostle (1997)
Written by Robert Duvall. 134 minutes. PG-13. Starring Robert Duvall, Farrah Fawcett, June Carter Cash, and Billy Bob Thornton. Forty years a preacher, an apostle full of brimstone and sweet Jesus, and Euliss “Sonny” Dewey still doesn’t get it, specifically the nature of the “Holy Ghost power” he has relished and exalted his whole long…
Reading for Preaching
“Humility” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith
“By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End” in The Complete Essays of Montaigne
The Social Humanism of Calvin
Additional content related to Humility
Philippians 2:1-13
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson offers preachers a virtual embarrassment of theological riches. Its verses 5-11’s celebration of Jesus’ humiliation and exaltation are among Christians’ favorite passages. They, in fact, make up the Epistolary Lesson’s reading on each Palm Sunday. However, as the New Testament scholar Troy Troftgruben notes, this 17th Sunday after Pentecost also offers…
Psalm 26:1-8
Most Bible scholars have serious doubts about the authorship attributions in the psalms. Certainly we know the superscriptions were added much later and are not considered canonical (like ones that claims a certain psalm stemmed from a time when David was fleeing Saul and such). And even all the psalms that are said to be…
Romans 12:1-8
The Spirit’s work doesn’t just change Jesus’ followers’ view of God. It also transforms the way God’s dearly beloved people think of our neighbor. The Spirit transforms Christians from those who seek only our own interests into people who the Spirit equips to also seek the well-being of the people around us. Quite simply, the…
Philippians 2:5-11
On this Sunday on which the RCL offers two options for its Epistolary Lesson, preachers might choose to focus on one of those options. Those who wish to pursue a Palm Sunday theme might choose to preach about Matthew 21’s account of it. Those who wish to focus on Jesus’ Passion theme might choose to…
Isaiah 49:1-7
In the Servant Songs in this part of Isaiah the Lord God alternates speaking with the Servant himself also making remarks or comments. In this passage we hear from both the God who pre-ordained the Servant long before he was born and from the Servant himself. From God’s side we get high-flying confidence. From the…
Luke 16:19-31
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” – Jesus (Luke 6.24) So goes the story of the rich man in Jesus’ story. He should have known better; he could have been (and done) better. He received good things, but built up treasures for himself instead of being rich towards…
Luke 14:1,7-14
Jan Richardson describes this text as one of the many that exemplify “the endless wisdom of the table.” Of course, the wisdom comes from how Jesus transforms the space in order to reform the community. Having just spent time in one last week, the lectionary skips over a Sabbath healing story (verses 2-6) to bring…
Psalm 25:1-10
In his book years ago The Closing of the American Mind Allan Bloom lamented the decline of true education in this nation’s colleges and universities. Bloom decried the way many professors had dispensed with the traditional canons of literature in favor of whatever was trendy and vogue. He mourned the fact that critical thinking and…
Amos 7:7-17
It just doesn’t pay to tell a prophet to shut up. Things tend to get worse. Or at least that is so with a true prophet of God. Hucksters, fakes, charlatans can be intimidated. They will flee when threatened. They will say nicer things for a price. But not so the true prophets of God…
2 Kings 5:1-14
Martin Luther King, Jr., once preached a sermon on this text from 2 Kings 5, and I’m grateful to Richard Lischer for calling attention to it in a lecture he gave while working on his book The Preacher King. In the classic style of preaching that Dr. King so well embodied, he picked up on…
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…
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26
Two Temples. Two Boys. One boy is apparently lost. The other boy is apparently given up by his parents. One boy is not at all lost but is at home in the Temple doing his real Father’s work. The other boy is making his home in the Temple and slowly discovering what may well be…
Psalm 25:1-10
Samuel Johnson is reported to have once said something to the effect that we need more often to be reminded than instructed. And perhaps the RCL thinks so too since Psalm 25 was assigned a few months ago near the end of September. Probably what I wrote then—most of which is the content of this…
Luke 2:22-40
It’s amazing how much detail Luke gives us. If Luke were a movie, it would have been directed by Cecil B. DeMille with a cast of thousands and long, lingering scenes on most every situation imaginable. The Gospel of Mark by comparison is like a PowerPoint presentation where the presenter goes way too fast through…
John 1:6-8, 19-28
“Among you stands one you do not know.” Those were John the Baptist’s words as recorded in John 1:26. Of course, at that time it was literally true that a quiet carpenter’s son from the backwaters of the Roman Empire was rubbing shoulders with lots of people—including the crowds that jostled together at the banks…
Philippians 2:1-13
We sometimes think of tensions within the Church, between churches or among Christians as new phenomena. Christians sometimes assume that, for example, the veritable plethora of denominations and congregations is a somehow recent development. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, however, suggests that tension within and among churches is ancient. After all, tensions in the Philippian church…
Psalm 119:33-40
The PBS show Sesame Street traditionally included as part of their educational efforts the opening line for each episode, “Today’s program is brought to you by the letter B . . .” Or it was by the letter R or E or G or whatever. That letter would then get woven throughout the episode in…
Matthew 10:24-39
John Donne was a seventeenth century author, poet, and preacher. In his poems and sermons, Donne penned a bevy of striking lines. “Death, be not proud . . . Death, thou shalt die!” “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Strikingly…
Micah 6:1-8
In the midst of the glory of Epiphany we encounter this sobering and bracing text about God’s lawsuit against his sinful people. How is this an Epiphany text? The only connection I could find lies in that little word “showed” in verse 8. After the whole court proceeding laid out in verses 1-7, God reveals…
Psalm 25:1-10
In his book years ago The Closing of the American Mind Allan Bloom lamented the decline of true education in this nation’s colleges and universities. Bloom decried the way many professors had dispensed with the traditional canons of literature in favor of whatever was trendy and vogue. He mourned the fact that critical thinking and…
2 Kings 5:1-14
This story has more interesting characters than a novel by Charles Dickens—stormin’ Naaman, commander of the Syrian army, this brave little girl kidnapped from Israel and enslaved, the clueless King of Israel, the greedy Gehazi, and, of course, the unflappable prophet Elisha. It’s a seemingly straightforward story about a little girl, a muddy river, and…
Luke 5:1-11
We’ve come to call it “the Holy Land.” From the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the country of Jordan in the east, from Syria in the north to the Sinai in the south travel companies, tour groups, and tourists treat this piece of Middle Eastern real estate as a unity. It’s where Jesus walked…
Mark 10:35-45
Digging Into the Text: We perhaps thought that Jesus had settled the disciple’s argument about “who is the greatest” back at Capernaum (9:33-34). But, evidently, the closer they get to Jerusalem, and the more the disciples realize that something big is going to happen, and the more they want have a major role. Jesus has…
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
As we have been noting, throughout 2 Corinthians Paul seems a bit all over the map. The criticisms made behind his back and the charges of the “super apostles” seem to have driven Paul to a kind of emotional brink. By his own admission in one form or another, he has been nearly beside himself…
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
A few years back a colleague of mine was a pastor in the Greater Toronto Area. The Lectionary called for a sermon on 1 Corinthians 8 and so my friend did his level best to translate these ancient words into a contemporary setting. Mostly he worked hard to take the “food sacrificed to idols” line…
Ephesians 1:15-23
If you walk into most any Protestant or Roman Catholic church sanctuary, the likelihood is that the dominant symbol you will see is the cross, usually front and center. But if you go into just about any Eastern or Greek Orthodox church sanctuary, you will be overwhelmed by a huge icon, or painting, of Christ…
Psalm 123
Psalm 123 is the fourth of the Songs of Ascent (Psalms 120-134) and the first that is a prayer. Most scholars think that Israelite pilgrims from all over the Promised Land (and perhaps beyond, if this is an early post-Exilic Psalm) sang these words as they journeyed up to Jerusalem and maybe even as they…
Matthew 23:1-12
Matthew 23 indicates that pastors (i.e., most of us reading this commentary) need to be wary of the titles people afford us. Although neither “Reverend” nor “Pastor” is specifically mentioned in Matthew 23, only a very wily preacher would ever suggest this indicates that those titles are exempt from Jesus’ comments. So what are we…
Philippians 2:1-13
I have heard a certain story several times, each time involving different people so I have no idea if it ever really happened to anyone or not. But one version of it that I heard was from the old “Tonight Show” starring Johnny Carson. The famous singer Frank Sinatra was a guest and in the…
Romans 12:1-8
Sober judgment. That lies pretty near the core of these quite well-known verses in Romans 12. We need to be transformed, Paul writes. Our minds need a refresh. If we get this renewal by the grace of God’s Holy Spirit, then we won’t act as the world acts. In this particular context Paul seems to…
Matthew 10:24-39
John Donne was a seventeenth century author, poet, and preacher. In his poems and sermons Donne penned a bevy of striking lines. “Death, be not proud . . . Death, thou shalt die!” “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Strikingly…
Philippians 2:5-11
“Shining Like Stars”: A sample sermon The story is told that one evening a man in a Dearborn, Michigan, restaurant bumped into no less than the famous Chrysler chairman, Lee Iacocca. “Oh, Mr. Iacocca,” the man exclaimed, “what an honor to meet you! Say, my name is Jack and I’m having a business dinner with…
2 Peter 1:16-21
It’s wonderful when you can see that a very important lesson finally took hold and sunk in for someone. If you are a teacher, then seeing a student avoid making the same mistakes all over again as a result of your instruction is so very rewarding. Some days those of us who teach wonder if…
John 1:29-42
“The world was made through him,” the apostle John wrote earlier in this chapter, “but when he was in the world, it didn’t recognize him.” Indeed, it didn’t. Jesus existed as just another face in the crowd. Even his own cousin, John the Baptist, almost missed recognizing him. And yet hidden inside that one man…
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Tell any average child that she is forbidden to look at pages 67-82 of the book sitting on the coffee table in the living room and you can all-but make certain that the first chance that child gets, she’s going to whisk that book to her room and turn directly to page 67! The Revised…
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 on this link. What does Jesus mean by all his talk here about…
John 10:22-30
Now that he is finishing his two terms in office with about 9 months or so to go, it can be a bit startling to realize that a scant decade ago, not only was the name of Barack Obama relatively unknown, the man himself could walk around Chicago or anywhere else freely and without the…
1 Samuel 9
Comments and Observations When preaching the story of Saul, we pastors have a hard time not beginning the sermon with the end in mind. We know where the story is going – we know who the man of God is and we know that by the end of the story the “message from God” (9:27)…
Revelation 5:1-10
Comments and Observations If one searches Google Images for the phrase “Jesus’ second coming,” the top results all have a few things in common: 1) there’s a lot of light, 2) there’s a lot of horses, and 3) Jesus is white, both in clothing and skin color. One of my personal favorites even has what…
Luke 1:39-45 (46-56)
We like musicals. Back in the day Hollywood turned out a great many films in this genre, though in recent years the movie musical has been pretty well restricted to Disney films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Musicals on Broadway, on the other hand, are as popular as ever. When I was in…
Psalm 123
Psalm 123 is a poignant plea for God to show the poet mercy. However, this is also a prayer that he offers on behalf of the entire embattled worshiping community. It’s a good reminder that even those who find themselves under duress should never forget to pray on behalf of others who are also experiencing…
Philippians 2:5-11
Comments, Observations, and Questions For this sermon commentary, I am going to zero in on the question asked by the Palm Sunday crowd in Matthew 21:10. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, surrounded by the acclamation of the crowd, “the whole city was stirred and asked, ‘Who is this?’” The crowds around Jesus…
Luke 5:1-11
Comments and Observations Anybody can have a bad day fishing. But you don’t expect professional fisherman to come up empty, yet the men who went on to become the first disciples seemed often to have this problem. If you wanted to find somebody to become a “fisher of people,” you might want at the very…
Preaching Connection: Humility