Movies for Preaching
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Written and directed by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Frank Capra. Starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, and Henry Travers. 130 mins. Rotten Tomatoes: 94%. It’s a film that supposedly everybody knows, and loves, hauled out each Christmas ad infintum in ever-so-boring bleached out copies. It’s an…
Babette’s Feast (1987) – 2
Babette’s Feast (1987). Written by Karen Blixen (short story) and Gabriel Axel (screenplay). Directed by Gabriel Axel. Starring Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Bergitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle, and Jean-Philippe Lafont. Music: Per Nørgaard. Cinematography: Henning Kristiansen. Rated G; 102 mins. Rotten Tomatoes 100%. Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast (1987) is a remarkable film of many pleasures, and…
Fargo (1996) – 2
Fargo, Written and Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, and Steve Buscemi. 98 minutes, Rated R. The bulk of the Coen brothers’ film Fargo is fraught with the tawdry and the evil. A car salesman’s scheme by which to swindle his father-in-law out of $1 million goes about…
Reading for Preaching
Anatomy of a Murder
Grace Notes: Daily Readings with a Fellow Pilgrim
“How Shall We Then Laugh?” in his Literature and Theology as Amiable Companions
Mere Christianity, in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
“Hope is More Than Happiness”
“Jogging” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith
The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring
The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script
Against Heresies, 5.33.3 in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1
Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet
“The Pleasures of Reading”
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
A Separate Peace
The Sacred Journey
“On Fairy-Stories” in The Tolkien Reader
Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
Where the Red Fern Grows: The Story of Two Dogs and a Boy
Additional content related to Joy
Psalm 98
I come from an ecclesiastical tradition that for a long time shunned the singing of anything but settings of the 150 psalms in worship. Despite a burst of hymnody in the post-Reformation church world—think of names like Isaac Watt or the Wesleys—singing any text that was not straight out of the Psalter was verboten. Ironically…
Psalm 84:1-7
Psalm 84 is a lovely poem and song and at just a dozen verses, it’s a fairly short song at that. So why the RCL would have us take up only the first seven verses is a mystery to me. Aside from a passing reference to “the wicked,” verses 8-12 simply continue the radiant imagery…
Luke 15:1-10
These two parables—even without the more often read story that follows them—have a bit of a bite to them all on their own. More likely than not, we come to them with hearts and minds more like the Pharisees and scribes than we do like the tax collectors and sinners. Many of us sitting in…
Psalm 30
A core tenet of the Christian faith is, to quote from the much-loved hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” “Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not, as Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.” The more fancy theological term for this is the Doctrine of Divine Immutability. Or we sometimes say God is the same…
Psalm 126
The first half of this short psalm does not seem to fit the Season of Lent very well. This begins as a psalm of rejoicing and praise, remembering the time the exiles returned from Babylon. Those verses paint an almost delirious picture of happiness, laughter, and people feeling as if their dreams had at long…
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Illustration: Imagine the crankiest person you know. Don’t say their name out loud. Perhaps it is a character from fiction: Eeyore, Ron Swanson, Debbie Downer or the Grinch. Perhaps someone in real life like Simon Cowell on America’s Got Talent. Now imagine Eeyore with a smile, Ron Swanson giggling, Debbie Downer with a soundtrack of…
Psalm 148
Whether it is Lectionary Year A, B, or C, if it’s the first Sunday after Christmas, you will see Psalm 148 as the psalm reading. Somebody along the way must have determined that this is such a fitting post-Christmas Day psalm that no Lectionary cycle would be complete without it. Many years that Sunday is…
Luke 1:39-45 (46-55)
We don’t hear Mary and the angel’s conversation this year but we do witness its aftereffects. Seized with anticipation of a fellow miracle-receiver, Mary hastens to the countryside to find her elder cousin Elizabeth. The thing is, we’re told that Mary was given the scoop about Elizabeth’s pregnancy from the angel Gabriel, but not vice…
Philippians 4:4-7
We’ve already noted how the Year C RCL Epistolary lessons devote relatively scant attention to the first and second comings of Christ. But at least on the first two Sundays in Advent they mention Christ’s return by referring to “the day of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 3:13; Philippians 1:6, 10) This Sunday’s Lesson doesn’t even…
Psalm 126
Perky. That’s the word that came to mind after I once again read this short, effervescent psalm. It’s perky. It bubbles over with joy and hopefulness. It is about a reversal of fortune that generates almost giddy happiness and joy. It is about dreams coming true—dreams that for too long seemed to be unlikely at…
Psalm 126
Whenever I read Psalm 126, the phrase “delirious with joy” leaps to mind. What emerges in the opening verses here is a portrait of people whose wildest dreams somehow came true and they discover that they just cannot stop giggling over it and grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat over and over and anon. Weeping…
Philippians 4:1-9
In a world that knows so little peace, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s references to “the peace of God” [eirene tou Theou]* are very attractive. In fact, preachers may want to comb media reports shortly before they preach on Philippians 4 in order to cull some contemporary examples of that lack of peace. We probably won’t…
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…
1 Peter 1:3-9
Suffering may seem like a theme that’s incongruous with the season of Easter. Last Sunday, after all, all but the Orthodox part of Christ’s Church celebrated Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Some Christians are, what’s more, leery about talking about Jesus and Christians’ suffering at any time of the year. In the Easter season, some…
Isaiah 35:1-10
Sometimes as a preacher you are pretty sure that the best idea you could have would be simply to read the passage and then sit down. Or just read it again. And sit down. But for goodness sake, don’t start to let your own pedestrian reflections clog up a passage so full of wonder! That’s…
Psalm 16
Psalm 16 presents the words of a person whose life appears to be going swimmingly. Everything is working for this poet. These look to be the words of a winner, of a person who was born sunny-side up as a confirmed optimist. And I suspect we’ve all met people like this. I also suspect that…
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…
Psalm 30
A friend of mine who passed away last year on Easter used to respond to life’s oft-difficult circumstances by saying, “Ah well, joy cometh in the morning.” Or at least joy may come in the morning but most of us know altogether too well that sometimes it doesn’t. Or the “morning” in question ends up…
Psalm 126
For a Lenten selection, this psalm is pretty sunny-side up and cheerful. Maybe as Lent is coming to a close, we are supposed to see in this poem the promise of restoration beyond the cross toward which we are journeying this season. This is, after all, one of the “Songs of Ascent” in the Book…
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Comments, Questions, and Observations Like Easter and Christmas, you sometimes wonder what else is left to say about such well-known stories like the Prodigal Son. But given the liturgical posture of Lent, and thinking about last week’s passage of warning, we are given a natural link to build between the elder brother and the parable…
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Quick! What is your favorite verse from the Book of Nehemiah? Ask that of most churchgoing Christians and the answer is likely to be, “Ummm . . . Not sure.” Although some people may be familiar with the overall storyline of Nehemiah, mostly the specifics are not widely known. So if you said to someone,…
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32: Lent 4C
Everything I Have He had a point, you know. The older brother: he had a point. And if you don’t believe that, then maybe it will help to admit that it’s a point you and I have made in the past and it’s a point we are liable to make again in the future, too. …
Zephaniah 3:14-20
I used to watch a TV show that was quite compelling and enjoyable but it did have one feature to it that I did not much like: in some episodes the show’s characters would find themselves sunk very deep down into dreadfully complex circumstances. The episode would devote something like 92% of the time to…
Isaiah 12:2-6
More than we realize, the Bible is a trove of images, similes, metaphors, and visual depictions. Throughout Scripture God describes himself through a battery of metaphors that inevitably lead you to form a picture in your mind’s eye. Many of the images are, on the face of them, contradictory, until you realize that even to…
Malachi 3:1-4
Have you ever read a classic book you’d never before read only to run across a line you knew by heart? “Oh,” you might say, “I didn’t know this is where that saying came from!” For instance, John Donne’s works are peppered with lines that have assumed a life of their own. People who don’t…
Psalm 126
Some of us might remember that another version/translation of Psalm 126:1 mentions specifically the time when “the captives” were brought back to Jerusalem. That framing of this psalm places this on the far side of the seventy-year exile in Babylon as the people of Israel slowly returned from captivity after Persia conquered Babylon and the…
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider At least partly because I struggled to relate it to life in the 20th and 21st centuries, I didn’t preach a series of sermons on the book of Hebrews for the first 20 years of my ministry. Since the book had always seemed to me to be so impractical,…
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
There is no question what this text is about—the ark of the covenant. It is mentioned over and over, nine times in all. So is David; his name comes up even more. David brings the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem. That’s what this text is about. But, so what? Why was that so important…
Romans 8:12-17
It should be no mystery why the Lectionary chose this passage as a Trinity Sunday text. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all nicely on display in these half-dozen verses. Of course, if you also chose the Romans 8 Lectionary text option for Pentecost last week, then you realize that for some reason the Lectionary…
Psalm 22:25-31
Let’s try a little thought experiment: imagine running across a long-ish narrative poem that began with something like, “The one I love torments me day and night, insults me in private and in public. She has made me out to be a villain, and I rue the day I ever met her at times. Who…
Isaiah 25:6-9
What a delightful, even delicious alternative reading for Easter Sunday! The regular (Old Testament?) reading is from Acts 10:34-43, Peter’s proclamation of the Easter message to the Roman centurion, Cornelius. I wrote on that text last Easter, so I thought I’d give you an alternative way to proclaim the familiar message of Christ’s resurrection—not a…
Psalm 111
Psalm 111 is a shook-up bottle of champagne when the cork flies off: it is effervescent, effusive, and thus it is delightfully over the top in most every way. It’s one of those poems that tempts one to plant tongue firmly in cheek to ask the psalmist, “Don’t hold back: tell us what you really…
Jeremiah 31:7-14
It takes so long for Christmas to get here. We wait and wait through the long season of Advent for the coming of the Lord. Then in one day we celebrated his coming, and we’re done. No wonder many non-liturgical Christians simply ignore Advent and spend a month celebrating Christmas. Such a miraculous event deserves…
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
Paul certainly had lofty ideals for the Christian Church. At the beginning of his first letter to Thessalonica’s Christians, he describes the Church as a community loved and chosen by God. That community, the apostle adds, draws its life from God and lives that life with faith, love and hope. When Paul concludes this letter…
Isaiah 40:1-11
Advent began last week with a lament filled with longing for the coming of God (Isaiah 64). On this Second Sunday of Advent, the mood changes dramatically with the Good News that God is coming soon. That shift of mood parallels the radical shift between Isaiah 39 and Isaiah 40. Even the most casual reader…
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…
Philippians 4:1-9
Few of us will be sad to watch the year of our Lord 2020 draw to a close at the end of December. It has been, after all, to say the least, a most stressful year. COVID-19 has wreaked almost unimaginable havoc on countless lives, jobs and institutions. North Americans are struggling with racial injustice…
Romans 8:1-11
Few cinematic images are more powerful than that of a courtroom as a verdict is announced. In classic movies, the judge often verbally polls each individual member of the jury. Each offers crushing repetition. It’s especially poignant when the verdict is “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” The fear of having some great power or person pronounce us…
Psalm 145:8-14
The Lectionary has carved out just seven verses from the middle of Psalm 145 but in truth, the whole Psalm sounds the same notes. Coming as this poem does near the very end of the Hebrew Psalter, we are definitely in the final exultation of singular praise with which this collection concludes. The Psalms have…
John 20:19-23
My friend the Bible teacher/commentator Dale Bruner is a wonderful teacher of biblical stories. He is largely retired now but years ago part of Dale’s teachings usually included some dramatic re-enactments of the story at hand. He always elicited a chuckle from the class at this point in John 20 when he reaches a certain…
Acts 2:42-47
We are in our fourth Sunday of reflections on Easter, using the book of Acts as our guide. We began on Easter in Acts 10, where we saw the world-changing significance of Christ’s Resurrection in Peter’s startling realization that God includes people from every nation in his covenantal embrace. Then we backed up to Peter’s…
Acts 16:22-34: Four Pages: Church in Prison
The Shawshank Redemption is at many points a difficult movie to watch. Lots of my friends down at Angola Prison tell me it’s their favourite movie. Everybody has seen it about a hundred times. Perhaps you remember it. Andy, the main character in the movie, suffers sexual assault, beatings, and brutality in prison. Shawshank does…
Jeremiah 31:7-14
So, Christmas is finally over, I mean really over. The visitors have all gone home, the tree has been put back in the box, the decorations are down in the basement, and the gifts, well, the gifts have been celebrated, enjoyed, used, broken, returned, or forgotten. But the Lectionary says, “Not so fast. Let’s keep…
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…
Luke 19:1-10
Maybe it was that sycamore tree that did it. Maybe even before Jesus wandered by, Zacchaeus looked at where he was and wondered how it had come to this. What was it that had quite literally chased him clean up a tree? His nice Armani tunic had a chlorophyll stain or two on it from…
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…
Psalm 16
Psalm 16 presents the words of a person whose life appears to be going swimmingly. Everything is working for this poet. These look to be the words of a winner, of a person who was born sunny-side up as a confirmed optimist. And I suspect we’ve all met people like this. I also suspect that…
Psalm 97
A few years ago the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship produced a new hymnal based on the Psalms. Its title is “Psalms for All Seasons.” The title is apt because as most of us know, the Hebrew Psalter is a collection of varied prayers that matches life’s many and varied seasons. As C.S. Lewis and…
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
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 Psalter” list—would likely not…
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…
Psalm 32
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 twenty-year sentence at the Spandau Prison in Berlin. Not long after arriving in Spandau, Speer met with the prison chaplain. To the chaplain’s…
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Like all good preachers, Moses knew how important it is to end your sermon with a story. After multiple chapters of “do this and don’t do that,” Moses is coming to the climactic end of his sermon to Israel. They are at the last stop in their wilderness wandering, standing at the brink of the…
Nehemiah 8:1-10
This passage will deeply move every preacher who reads it, either to joy or to sorrow, to gratitude or to envy. I mean, what happens here is a preacher’s dream. The whole congregation– men, women (not typical in a Temple service), and children old enough to understand what was going on—spontaneously gathered for worship. They…
Hebrews 10:5-10
What on earth is this whole Christmas business about? Why is it worth all the effort so many people put into celebrating it? To answer that, not just the Church but also the world needs to know just why Jesus came to be not only born in Bethlehem, but also to grow up to live,…
Zephaniah 3:14-20
As I read Zephaniah, the memory of a bumper sticker came back to me. It said, “Jesus is coming soon, and is he ever ticked!” (It actually used a more vulgar term that gave the sticker more punch, but you get the point.) That is exactly the mood of most of Zephaniah. Indeed, if our…
Philippians 4:4-7
The Bible is full of commands to “Rejoice.” Yet they’re not always calls to God’s people to just “be happy.” After all, the Scriptures’ calls to rejoice sometimes seem to come in the context of the least happy times and places. For example, the Paul who writes the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary assigns for this…
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Until relatively recently I’d never preached a series of sermons on the book of Hebrews. That’s partly because I’ve struggled to relate it to life in the 20th and 21st centuries. Hebrews has always seemed to me to be so impractical and theological. So I’ve shied away from much of its talk about things like…
2 Samuel 6:1-5; 12b-19
2 Samuel 6 contains enough action and vivid images to fill a whole Netflix series. It, after all, features a mysterious box, stumbling oxen and impetuous priest. Our text also gives us a dancing king, livid queen and one great big party. David has spent many years running from Saul. However, as 2 Samuel 6…
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
These words are very old. Ancient. Scholars differ on most everything, of course, but it is possible that 1 Thessalonians was the first of Paul’s epistles. And since we are quite certain that the writing of the epistles pre-dates the writing down of the Gospels by a good bit of time, it is fully possible…
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…
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…
Psalm 32:1-7
Psalm 32 is one of the seven penitential Psalms in the Psalter. Not surprisingly, the Revised Common Lectionary sees it as a perfect fit for the season of Lent. Indeed, I wrote on Psalm 32 just a few months ago for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (cf. the entry for Feb. 29 in the Sermon…
Psalm 111
Psalm 111 introduces a series of Hallel Psalms (111-117), so named because the Hebrew of each Psalm begins with Hallelu Yah, “Praise Yahweh.” Indeed, Psalm 111 and 112 are twin Psalms, almost Siamese twins, because they are connected in so many ways. Any casual reader can see that the last verse of Psalm 111 is…
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…
Luke 13:10-17
When the truth humiliates you, you are humiliated indeed. Worse, when a truth so obvious that it can be stated in a sentence or two humiliates you, then your shame is profound. It’s one thing if a philosopher builds an elaborate argument to disprove some point you had made but it’s another thing if a…
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
All things being equal, would you consider it a good idea to interrupt Jesus? Does our Savior need cutting, a bit of shushing now and then, or perhaps some retrospective editing? The Lectionary seems to think so and with all due respect to the good folks who compile the Revised Common Lectionary, I can’t see…
Psalm 16
On this sixth Sunday of Ordinary time, reading the sixteenth Psalm brings back extraordinary memories for me. In my Bible, I have underlined many individual verses of Psalm 16 over the years and I’ve filled the margins with dates and notes that remind me of why I underlined those verses. For example, verse 6 is…
Psalm 150
Well, Easter is over. The long build up of Lent is a distant memory. The blast of the trumpets, the glad songs of the thronging worshipers, and the scent of the lilies have all faded away. Easter is over. Sigh! Not so fast, says the Revised Common Lectionary. Let’s keep our focus on Easter for…
Psalm 126
We’ve come a long way on our Lenten journey, but we’re not there yet. We’re still on pilgrimage, so Psalm 126 is a perfect Psalm for this stage of our lives. It is the seventh of fifteen Psalms of Ascent sung by ancient Israel as they journeyed from the various parts of the Promised Land…
Psalm 32
On this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we’re a little past mid-point on our journey to the cross, and Psalm 32 gives us an opportunity for a mid-course correction. It is very easy to make light of Lent by giving up something that doesn’t really matter or by playing at spiritual disciplines. Psalm 32 reminds us…
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…
John 3:22-36
After the midnight conversation with Nicodemus in which Jesus proclaims who he is and what he is about on earth, the gospel writer solidifies and catapults the message by bringing Jesus and the John the Baptist’s storylines back together in verse 22. Back in chapter 1, John the Baptist is introduced as the man sent…
James 1:1-18
When was the last time you experienced pure, unrestrained joy? For most of us, “joy” is something that goes hand in hand with the best moments in our lives. It erupts, unbidden, when everything is going our way. At the birth of a child. On our wedding day. After opening an acceptance letter to our…
Nehemiah 8:1-12
Comments and Observations It must have been a long, hot, tense six months. The book of Nehemiah tells the story of the return of the exiles and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah secures permission to return to his home land in order to rebuild the walls. But not everyone is pleased by…
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Comments and Observations In all the Bible studies I’ve been part of for the last 40 years, I can’t remember anyone exclaiming, “Let’s study Hebrews!” At least once a year someone will urge the group to study James, the focus of the lectionary last month, because “it’s so practical!” Hebrews is so… impractical, so theological…
Acts 8:26-40
May I just ask a rather simple, straightforward question: Where in the whole wide world did this Ethiopian fellow get a copy of Isaiah?? I mean, it’s not like he had downloaded it onto his Kindle. It’s not as though while he was in Jerusalem he found it on the “remaindered scrolls” table at the…
Preaching Connection: Joy