Additional content related to Righteousness
Psalm 1
Few of us do what many monastic and other traditions have done in history with the Psalms: namely, read them straight through and in order. Instead we bob and weave our way through the Psalms, picking and choosing to read this Psalm or another for no particular rhyme or reason. And so it’s easy to…
2 Samuel 23:1-7
The so-called “last words of David” are curiously placed. For one thing, there is quite a bit more action involving David in the balance of even 2 Samuel. But there will be more words and more narrative to come in also the opening portion of 1 Kings. It’s as though the author and editor of…
Psalm 85:8-13
To be honest, Psalm 85 is a little all over the place. The first four verses reflect a time when God forgave Israel for some transgressions and restored them. But then the next set of verses seems to indicate Israel went backwards, sinned again, and so found itself under the wrath of God again. And…
Ephesians 5:8-14
Few Lectionary texts begin more mysteriously than this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. “You were once darkness,” Paul reminds Ephesus’s Christians, “but now you are light in the Lord” (8). The apostle seems to assert that God’s adopted sons and daughters don’t just naturally live in spiritual darkness. We naturally are spiritual darkness. God doesn’t just summon…
Isaiah 65:17-25
Every preacher knows what a challenge it is to preach on Easter. On the one hand, it is the epicenter of the Gospel, the event that makes or breaks the claims of Jesus, as Paul says in I Corinthians 15. So, how can we mere mortals do justice to such a world changing moment in…
Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40
Across the spectrum of poems in the Hebrew Psalter are prayers that fit most every occasion and season in life. Laments, petitions, confessions, praise, thanksgiving; songs that fit happy days and songs that fit rotten days; lyric expressions of trust and bitter cries of abandonment and anger. It’s all in there. That’s an important thing…
Psalm 1
Few of us do what many monastic and other traditions have done in history with the Psalms: namely, read them straight through and in order. Instead we bob and weave our way through the Psalms, picking and choosing to read this Psalm or another for no particular rhyme or reason. And so it’s easy to…
Preaching Connection: Righteousness