Additional content related to Pentecost
Romans 8:1-11
Few things offend 21st century western sensibilities more than what our culture perceives of as closed minds. The mirror image of that is the high value that many of our contemporaries at least claim to attach to open minds. Perhaps especially North Americans and Europeans claim to abhor closemindedness and celebrate open-mindedness. It is, of…
Romans 7:15-25a
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Paul simply can’t understand what he does. He repeatedly asserts that he knows what’s right and holy. Yet the apostle also just as persistently insists that he doesn’t do what he knows is right and holy. Throughout approximately the first quarter of his letter to the Romans, Paul talks a lot…
Romans 6:12-23
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s preachers might begin their message by saying something like, “Claims of mastery over any human being is despicable – except in one case.” That won’t just, after all, grab our hearers’ attention. Claiming that one form of slavery is beneficial is, in fact, also at the heart of Romans 6:12-23. While…
Romans 4:13-25
This week’s Epistolary Lesson draws those who follow it back to the theme of, among other things, hope. It does so, however, not long after we contemplated it in an earlier commentary. While that may seem repetitive, any “reading” of 21st century culture suggests that hope remains in short supply. In fact, one might argue…
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 1:1-21
It’s hard to remember a Pentecost Sunday on which the brokenness and division of the world into which God sent the Holy Spirit was on fuller display than 2023’s. So much pulls groups of people and nations apart that if people are to be united, something drastic must happen. Yet Luke begins his description of…
Acts 2:1-21
It was an annual holiday and so people knew what to expect. That’s how it goes with regularly occurring events. Yes, there can be minor variations but when it’s Christmastime, we all have our typical ways of celebrating the occasion and the same goes for Easter or Thanksgiving or even the Fourth of July. We…
John 7:37-39
For Pentecost this year, our lectionary text places right smack dab in the middle of it all, in Jerusalem at the Festival of Booths (better known to some as Sukkot or the Festival of Tabernacles). It’s important to have a few things in mind about this particular festival. First, it’s the festival. It’s the weeklong…
Psalm 104:24-35
The singer Sting says he’ll be watching “every breath you take.” The pop group Berlin gave the original Top Gun movie its romantic lead theme music with its song “Take My Breath Away.” Taylor Swift has a whole album titled “Breathe” and its lead song says that after her love went away, she just cannot…
Joel 2:23-32
This is the “happy” section of Joel but it probably needs to be seen in context. More on that at the end of this sermon commentary. For now we can see a connection to last week’s Old Testament Common Lectionary text from Jeremiah 31, which pointed to the promise of God’s giving his people a…
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
We sometimes assume that we can recognize an alien when we see him (he’s green and has antennae) or at least see her citizenship papers (they say citizen of Canada, or Mexico, the United States, or some other country of origin). Yet when Hebrews’ author speaks of people like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and others…
Colossians 3:1-11
Few issues roil the 21st century North American church more than those that revolve around human sexuality. North American Christians spend much time arguing about extra-marital sex, same sex attraction and marriage, as well as gender dysphoria. Churches and denominations are dividing, whether formally or informally, around the appropriateness or inappropriateness of various sexual behaviors….
Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)
The sacrament of baptism isn’t just a source of almost endless controversy among Jesus Christ’s friends. It’s also sometimes vulnerable to distraction from its importance. When, for example, Reformed Christians think of infant baptism, we sometimes focus on cute babies and their outfits, as well as beaming parents and grandparents. When Christians who practice “believers’…
Colossians 1:15-28
“Sedition” and “seditious” are concepts to which at least some Americans have paid a lot of attention over the past eighteen months. Some are asking themselves and each other whether a mob’s January 6, 2021’s storming of the United States Capital building was an act of sedition. At least some Americans who wonder that also…
Colossians 1:1-14
Elements of this week’s Epistolary Lesson are faintly reminiscent of Huck Finn’s experience with prayer. In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck recounts how his foster mother, Miss Watson, tried to teach him to pray. “Miss Watson … took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray…
Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16
“It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up” has spilled from the lips of at least some of us. Sometimes, of course, we try to cloak our braggadocio in the mantle of false humility. But few of us easily resist the temptation to brag about ourselves or people who are dear to us. Thugs…
Galatians 5:1,13-25
It comes up repeatedly in our conversations with our Jewish friends and acquaintances. “How can you live without God’s law to guide your life?” The observant Jews we know and love can’t imagine living without the structure Torah gives them. “Doesn’t it lead to some kind of anarchy?” is one form of the questions they…
Acts 2:1-21
COVID-19. Has anything in our experience ever made us think as much about the act of respiration, of breathing, than the global pandemic we have been in for over two years now? Way back in 2006 I visited Japan. At that time there was no particular flu bug worrying anyone. Yet I was struck to…
Romans 8:14-17
My last surviving parent’s death last year reminded me that inheritance can be complicated. My mom and dad, while never materially wealthy by North American standards, did what they could to ensure that their children as well as worthy causes would inherit something from them. But, of course, so many others also wanted a “piece”…
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…
John 14:8-17 (25-27)
The lectionary helps us to focus on the Holy Spirit in this passage by assigning this text to Pentecost Sunday, the Sunday in which we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. On Pentecost we remember and express gratitude for yet another one of God’s promises fulfilled: the promise of a “True Friend” (Dale Bruner’s…
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 2:1-21
Every pulpit veteran has preached on this story many times, but this year we have a ready-made angle into it. We have seen more than our share of violent winds the past year, haven’t we? Hurricanes in the Caribbean, tornadoes all over the South, and in my home territory of West Michigan those bomb cyclones…
Acts 2:2-21
Throughout nearly all of recorded human history, people’s inability to communicate with each other has divided us. So for people to somehow come (and stay) together, something dramatic must happen. In fact, since human efforts to fully unify people have proved largely futile or temporary, we might add that something dramatic must happen to us….
Acts 2:1-21
Just before he ascended to the heavenly realm Jesus promised his disciples they’d his “witnesses … to the ends of the earth.” Yet nothing any of them had done or said up to that point had even hinted that they were up to that task. In fact, the gospels consistently portray Jesus’ disciples as a…
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
This Psalm gives the enterprising preacher a fresh alternative for a Pentecost sermon, because it focuses on the Spirit’s work not in redemption (as do the other readings for Pentecost Sunday), but in creation. Though a number of contemporary scholars think the mention of the Spirit in verse 30 is not a reference to the…
Romans 8:22-27
Comments and Observations How should we celebrate Pentecost? What should our mood be, given the very different emphases of the four lectionary readings for Pentecost, 2015? As I pondered that, I recalled some wry comments made by Orthodox theologian Frederica Mathewes Green on the very different ways we celebrate Christmas and Easter. “It’s that time…
Preaching Connection: Pentecost