Movies for Preaching
Decalogue 1 (1989) – 2
Decalogue I (1989). Written by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Directed by Kryszstof Kieslowski. Cinematography by Wieslaw Zdort. Music by Zbigniew Preisner. Starring Henryk Baranowski , Maja Komorowska, and Wojciech Klata. Facets Edition. Rating: G, 56 mins. Rotten Tomatoes: 100%. In the late 1980s in Poland, two fellows put together what is generally recognized as…
Three Colors: Blue (1993)
Three Colors: Blue (1993). Written by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Music by Zbigniew Preisner. Starring Juliette Binoche, Florence Pernel, and Charlotte Véry. 98 mins. Rating: R. Rotten Tomatoes: 98%; Metacritic: 85%. Suddenly, she’s a widow and also childless. Just about all the bad that can happen to someone falls upon…
Wonder Woman (2017)
Wonder Woman (2017). Directed by Patty Jenkins. Starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, and Robin Wright. 141 mins. Rated PG-13. Wonder Who? The wonder of Wonder Woman is that, indeed, the film is a wonder, the best commix-inspired flick since the original Superman all the way back in 1978, some four decades later and countless…
Reading for Preaching
Anatomy of a Murder
Love Within Limits: A Realist’s View of 1 Corinthians 13
Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay
The Sweet Hereafter
Blessings: An Autobiographical Fragment
Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
Bodies Electric
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
And So It Goes: Adventures in Television
Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York
Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home
Additional content related to Suffering
Isaiah 50:4-9a
As we enter into Holy Week, the Lectionary offers us two paths, a choose-your-own-adventure of sorts. We can preach the palms or the passion. However, I note that, outside the psalms, there is only one Hebrew Scripture text and that belongs to the passion. Woke Although Lent is a season of fasting, in many ways…
Hebrews 5:1-10
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is so grounded in Jewish theology and praxis that 21st century non-Jewish preachers may find it challenging to preach about in a way that’s faithful to both the text and our own context. However, given the text’s focus on the work of a high priest, preachers might ask if there are…
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…
Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Once Upon a Time… Love it or hate it, Job rarely allows a neutral reading. However, we can, perhaps, safeguard against the worst interpretations by stopping at the outset to clarify the text’s genre. According to Hebrew scholar, Robert Alter, the interpretive key may be found in the very first verse: “A man there was…
James 5:13-20
Jesus’ most faithful followers are often people of faith in action. We want to actively love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. Christians feel called and expected by God to do things like share the gospel, worship the Lord, care for people who are materially needy and be good stewards of God’s creation….
Ephesians 6:10-20
It’s not surprising that preachers and scholars generally pay most of our attention to this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s military imagery. After all, while Paul’s images are easily misunderstood and misapplied, they’re also prominent in this text, vivid and memorable. We’ve even managed to cram some of them into things like Vacation Bible School weeks. So,…
Psalm 23
Lately I have been in a phase of life where green pastures and still waters seem far away. And though dark-ish valleys have seemed all-too-real, the prospect of being exalted over my foes likewise seems a ways off just now. Maybe you as a preacher feel this way too. I have been out of the…
Psalm 123
Recently I did a study tour through the American South with a focus on reckoning with the legacy of slavery in the U.S. Before the trip I had known, of course, about the reality and the tragedy of the slave culture of the South (and a few places more north too). But after eight full…
Mark 2:23-3:6
Comments, Questions, and Observations These two Sabbath stories are far from unique in the gospels; time and time again, Jesus upends the rules established for right observance. Each time he does so, he is embodying what he said in Matthew 5.17-20: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;…
Philippians 2:5-11
In his excellent commentary on the book of Hebrews (Hebrews, Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), the biblical scholar Tom Long refers to what he calls “the parabola of salvation.” It’s basically the trajectory that Hebrews and, I would suggest, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson trace “from creation downward to the cross up the heavenly place of…
Isaiah 50:4-9
A Turn Toward the Passion Interestingly, the Lectionary provides two sets of readings for this last Sunday in Lent: (1) a Psalm and Gospel that celebrate the procession with the Palms and (2) a full set of four readings that look ahead to all that stands between the false and frivolous praise of Palm Sunday…
Hebrews 5:5-10
When Jesus’ friends think about his status and work, several things may quickly come to mind. Some Christians readily think of him as the Son of God, Savior and Lord. God’s dearly beloved people may also quickly think of Jesus as a healer, prophet, miracle worker and even a kind of Jewish religious iconoclast. This…
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…
Psalm 70
At Calvin Seminary for the past two academic years we have been holding a once-weekly Public Reading of Scripture where we gather for 30 minutes to read aloud a couple chapters each of an Old Testament passage, a Gospel passage, and a Psalm. Not long ago Psalm 70 was read by a student and you…
Philippians 1:21-30
John Wooden was the hugely successful coach of America’s UCLA’s men’s basketball team. He also sought to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. Wooden once famously said, “The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.” This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Paul would probably have agreed. After all,…
Genesis 32:22-31
If you are searching Hebrew Scripture for parenting advice, healthy examples of marital bliss … well, you probably shouldn’t. The Bible is not a book about functional families. The Bible, chock full of dysfunctional people, is always the story of a functional God. Jacob’s whole life has been clouded by competition with the twin brother…
Psalm 69:7-10, (11-15), 16-18
The Revised Common Lectionary is usually a straightforward affair when it comes to selected texts. But with semi-regularity you get a text chopped up the way Psalm 69 is divided in this lection. First we jump onto the already moving train only at verse 7, then we grab 4 verses, put 5 more in parentheses…
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 66:8-20
For reasons unknown the RCL has us skip the first 7 verses of Psalm 66. Mostly they are lovely sentiments of praise and thanksgiving. But as we pick up the action in verse 8, we see a curious conjunction of things. On the one hand there is one of those global statements you often find…
1 Peter 2:19-25
God has graciously called God’s dearly beloved people out of spiritual darkness and into the light of God glorious salvation. God has also called God’s adopted children to be God’s elect, God’s chosen people and heirs of God’s riches blessings. However, in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, Peter describes another high calling from God. God has…
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 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…
Exodus 17:1-7
It’s the kind of thing that could become a family inside joke. Perhaps years before, the family had taken a Spring Break trip somewhere. Except that on this particular trip the weather was disastrously bad the whole week. No outdoor activities were possible. Instead the family got stuck inside a hotel room where arguments over…
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Comments, Observations, and Questions A week before Christmas this year, the Lectionary via Psalm 80 takes us out of any setting we might ordinarily associate with the holidays and settles us instead into a very bleak landscape. There can be no missing in Psalm 80—despite the Lectionary’s attempted leap-frog over the starker verses in the…
Isaiah 7:10-16
Comments, Observations, and Questions As an inspired apostle and evangelist, Matthew may make any biblical connection he wishes and no one else can call him or question him on it. He can unearth any nugget he wants from anywhere across the Hebrew Scriptures and if, having dug it out, Matthew then claims this verse was…
Psalm 46
It probably counts as something of an irony that for all its soaring comfort in proclaiming the sovereignty of God and God’s rule over all things, Psalm 46 is invoked most often precisely in those times when it is most difficult to believe that a good and loving God is providentially in charge of the…
Luke 21:5-19
Luke likely wrote his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles around 80 AD. In other words, Luke already knew how the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and had already witnessed the persecution of the church and its leaders. Luke lived through and witnessed new followers of the Jesus Way be put to death for…
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
It’s hard to read this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson without getting a lump in one’s throat. After all, it’s not just that it contains what are perhaps among the imprisoned Paul’s last recorded words. It’s also that it suggests that the apostle who has befriended to so many seems about to die virtually all alone. Acts…
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Our lectionary reading for this 22nd Sunday of The Growing Season (more commonly known as Ordinary Time) reminds us of one of the deepest darkest secrets of spiritual growth. As we’ve followed the readings for Year C, we’ve been reminded of the importance of getting the basic gospel straight (Galatians), of staying Christ centered (Colossians),…
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Paul speaks repeatedly about suffering for the sake of the gospel. He does so not just in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson but also throughout his letter to Timothy. Yet that kind of suffering may be largely unfamiliar to many of the preachers who read this commentary as well as 2 Timothy. Of course, some North…
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…
Psalm 112
Very often the Psalms are actually a form of beatitude. Psalm 1 sets the tone: “Blessed is the one who does not walk with the wicked.” Beatitudes—including the most famous ones of them all from Matthew 5—are very often blessings spoken over people whose lives the rest of the world may not deem to be…
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Hebrews’ author devotes most of chapter 11 to an exploration of what it means to live and die by faith. But he doesn’t call his readers to “fix their eyes” (12:2) on any of the people we sometimes “heroes and heroines of the faith.” Hebrews’ author only invites his readers to “keep our eyes” on…
Luke 9:51-62
Most scholars agree that this passage is yet another instance of Jesus communicating the difficulty of discipleship. In fact, this passage is often included at the beginning of Lent, since it so clearly marks a transition point in the gospel of Luke as Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem. But here we are, in Ordinary…
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”…
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…
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…
Luke 13:1-9
Comments, Questions, and Observations Why did the bad thing happen? Did they deserve it? This is how the text starts. And just to get it out of the way, Jesus doesn’t answer the why question. When it comes to theodicy, Scripture rarely, if ever, does. Instead, God’s wisdom is to turn our hearts and eyes…
Isaiah 43:1-7
Scholars tell us that there may have been at least two, probably three (perhaps four) “Isaiahs” whose prophetic words make up the one Old Testament book we call Isaiah. If so, then the version of Isaiah we get in this 43rd chapter is definitely the “Happy Isaiah” as compared to the doom-and-gloom Isaiah from earlier…
Micah 5:2-5a
When the Lectionary dishes up just 3.5 verses, skipping the first verse of a chapter and stopping just halfway through the fifth verse, you just know it’s like putting blinders on us readers to keep us from seeing something on either side of the lection. I don’t know why they made this choice but lyric…
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Acoustics are so key. How does a text sound? Usually you need to pay attention to the context to figure that out. But when you dive into the middle of a text like this lection, you can so easily miss or forget that wider context. But remembering it can change the acoustics pretty significantly. After…
Ruth 1:1-18
To my mind stopping the reading of Ruth 1 at verse 18 is the narrative equivalent of ending the movie Field of Dreams just before the moment when Ray encounters his long-dead and estranged father on his magical Iowa baseball diamond. Why stop short of the scene that brings the whole thing together!? So trust…
Hebrews 7:23-28
Few promises mean more to hurting people than, “I’m praying (or I’ll pray) for you.” We long to have someone “put in a good word for us” before God. In fact, I’ve even people whose faith is fragile or apparently non-existent seem to often appreciate the thought behind a promise of prayer, if not necessarily…
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
And they lived happily ever after . . . Really? Is it really possible that the Bible’s most troubled (and at times most torturous) book has the proverbial “happy ending”? Did Disney take over this project at some point?! At first glance you might think so. Job replies to God that in the wake of…
Job 38:1-7, 34-41
Why did this happen? Why didn’t God prevent this? “Pastor, why did this happen? “Pastor, where is God?” A child dies, a good person is killed, a freak accident takes the life of someone who was unspeakably precious to us, and we are left to wonder why. And if we’re honest as pastors, we just…
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
If you read the John Grisham novel The Firm, you may recall the horrifying moment when a young lawyer and his wife discover that the house so “generously” provided to them by the young man’s law firm is bugged to the hilt. Every conversation they had had, every lovemaking sigh, every TV show they had…
Ephesians 6:10-20
The past approximately 17 months have taken a heavy toll on many of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s proclaimers and hearers. The pandemic and efforts to mitigate its affects have caused great physical, mental and even spiritual suffering. They’ve left us exhausted. What’s more, just when we seemed to have turned a corner, COVID-19 seems to…
Ephesians 5:15-20
Near the middle of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson the apostle summons his readers to “understand what the Lord’s will is” (17b). In a letter that he soaks with grace, this may be among the biggest challenges he sets before God’s Ephesian adopted sons and daughters. Paul spends much of the first part of his letter…
Psalm 30
Psalm 30 is almost singularly upbeat in its incessant exaltations of God. But the discerning reader and preacher will notice that underneath all this praising there has been a history of pain. References are made to having gone down to the depths, to sinking into the pit, to enemies eager to gloat over the psalmist’s…
John 17:6-19
“You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child.” That is a saying of my former colleague Ron Nydam. And he’s right. Worse yet, we all know that you cannot insure the happiness of your children, either. And that truth is married to another undeniable fact and that is this: the wider world in which we…
Isaiah 50:4-9a
The choice of this text for the Sixth Sunday of Lent makes perfect sense if we remember that the RCL has been tracing the theme of covenant this year (Year B). We have moved from God’s covenant with Noah and nature to God’s covenant with Abraham, from the giving of the covenant Law at Sinai…
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…
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
The Lectionary is giving us but a small sampling of Psalm 107 by carving out the first three verses and then a half-dozen from the center of the larger poem. If you read the entire psalm, you will discover it is a curious historical retrospective on various experiences that various unnamed people have had at…
Isaiah 40:21-31
Sample sermon: “What Can You Reasonably Expect from God?” I once preached this sermon, focusing particularly on the beloved verse 31. I received a phone call the other day from a modern-day daughter of Job, whom I will call Mary. At one time Mary had been a pastor’s wife with 2 young children and a…
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 8:26-39
So many Christians cherish this passage that it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of its central meaning. Paul talks in it about pivotal truths like providence, predestination and justification. Yet all of those things are like signs along the road that point to one central truth: God’s love is as invincible as it is sometimes…
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…
Psalm 66:8-20
What is this COVID-19 season for us? A source of lament? A time of testing? Ten years from now, how will we look back on this time? As one of the worst seasons of our lives that we are so amazingly glad is well behind us, or as a time for which we manage to…
1 Peter 2:19-25
Many members of the American civil rights movement embraced Peter’s commendation of Christians who put up with unjust suffering’s pain. In fact, that movement produced a treasure trove of photos of people bearing up under such misery. One could fill books with pictures of people kneeling in non-violent resistance to beatings and submitting to attacks…
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19
In a time of global pandemic, of fear, worry, and sorrow, Psalm 116 is 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 we all can but hope that very soon we…
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…
Isaiah 63:7-9
The Old Testament reading for this First Sunday after Christmas is a delightful little snippet of poetry commemorating what God has done to save his people. It’s neat and clean and lovely and it fits this liturgical season perfectly. The only problem is that its context is anything but neat and clean and lovely. This…
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
This passage is part of an extended dialogue between the prophet Habakkuk and his God, whose ways with God’s own people are a mystery to the prophet. In the first 4 verses, the prophet passionately voices his complaint to God. In 1:5-11, God answers that complaint with a truth that Habakkuk finds unbelievable. So in…
Psalm 112
Very often the Psalms are actually a form of beatitude. Psalm 1 sets the tone: “Blessed is the one who does not walk with the wicked.” Beatitudes—including the most famous ones of them all from Matthew 5—are very often blessings spoken over people whose lives the rest of the world may not deem to be…
Isaiah 50:4-9b
Clearly, the composers of the Revised Common Lectionary thought this little snippet of Scripture was perfect for Palm Sunday because they have selected it for all three years of the preaching cycle. I’m not sure your people will see it that way, because it is obviously more about Christ’s suffering than about his Triumphal Entry. …
Hebrews 7:23-28
This may not seem like a particularly appropriate Sunday on which to preach about priests. After all, Protestant Christians are preparing to celebrate the birth of the Reformation that the corruption of the Roman Catholic priesthood in part fueled. What’s more, the Reformation emphasized the priesthood of all believers. Since Protestant Christians recognize that all…
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
After surviving a blizzard of words (some from Job, many from his friends, and a few from God), we come to the end of the book of Job with this short chapter which reports on Job’s last words and last days. It is a surprising and, for many readers, controversial ending to a surprising and…
Hebrews 5:1-10
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 between us. However, Hebrews 5 insists that the only way that can happen is if God does it. During this American political campaign season, both…
Job 38
Job is a book full of long speeches by people who are absolutely sure of themselves. Job’s erstwhile friends have turned into prosecutors for the state, pressing their case that Job is guilty of great crimes. Otherwise he wouldn’t be suffering the way he is. And Job gives long passionate defenses of his innocence and…
Job 23:1-9; 16-17
When we left Job last week, he was sitting in the ash heap, covered with nasty open sores, surrounded by three compassionately silent friends, quietly accepting the trouble the Lord had presumably sent into Job’s life. Here, twenty chapters later, not much has changed in one sense. Job is still in utter misery. But in…
Job 1:1, 2:1-10
After a month of looking at Wisdom literature from a woman’s point of view, we will now spend a month in the decidedly masculine book of Job which wrestles with the question that has confounded the wisest women and men in the world. Why should a righteous person suffer in a world ruled by a…
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
There’s no two ways about it: Paul’s second letter to the folks in Corinth can be tough to read. When Paul is not ranting and raving against his “super apostle” foes who have been badmouthing him up one side of the street and down the other, Paul also makes it clear that he himself has…
Psalm 31:9-16
The Revised Common Lectionary has two suggested readings from the Psalms for this Sixth Sunday of Lent, Palm Sunday. The first, Psalm 118, emphasizes the positive side of this day with lots of verses that anticipate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The second, Psalm 31:9-16, zeros in on the tragedy of Palm Sunday, the gathering…
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
Psalm 90 is a classic text for funerals, for ecclesiastical observances of New Year’s Eve, and for any other time we mark the passing of time and lament our tenuous place in it. So it is a fitting choice for this last Sunday of October just a month away from the end of Ordinary Time….
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…
Philippians 1:21-30
They say a death sentence has a way of focusing the mind, and certainly the Apostle Paul could attest to this. He is in prison as he writes to the Philippians and even though he just went out of his way to assure the Philippians both that he was doing fine and that even the…
Exodus 16:2-15
Human memory can be remarkably pliable. It isn’t just illness or advancing age that can bend and twist it. Trauma too can do remarkable things to memory. Exodus 15 describes how God responds to God’s Israelite children’s grumbling about their lack of something to drink. At Marah and Elim God gives them refreshing water to…
Exodus 3:1-15
“Does Jesus Care?” is a hymn grieving family members sometimes ask soloists to sing at funerals. They ask, “Does Jesus care when my heart is pained/ too deeply for mirth or song,/ as the burdens press, and the cares distress,/ and the way grows weary and long?” While the lyrics may seem a bit outdated…
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Almost all people walk the wide roads that are dreams for their children, work, future, and themselves. And while some of those dreams don’t come true, as long as they don’t disrupt current arrangements, they’re pretty harmless. However, where dreams about the future conflict with current realities, they can be very disruptive. In fact, they…
Genesis 32:22-31
God graciously meets and accepts God’s adopted sons and daughters wherever and whoever we are. But God never just leaves us where we are. That’s no less true of God’s 21st century adopted daughters and sons than it is of Jacob. The first time God meets Jacob, he’s fleeing both his homeland and his twin’s…
Romans 8:26-39
All of us prefer winning over losing. All the world loves a winner. “There is no prize for second place” an old adage assures us. And most of us believe that without question. Once in a while, though, the world embraces a loser. Seldom did this happen more dramatically than at the 1988 Winter Olympics…
Psalm 69:7-10, (11-15), 16-18
Psalm 69 is the cry of a person in extremis. He uses the conventional language of drowning to describe his distress. The Jews were a non-nautical people, so the thought of falling into deep water where there is no firm bottom provoked the deepest terror. We can almost see the Psalmist flailing about as he…
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
The novelist Richard Ford said once that the goal of the characters in his novels is this: “All we want is to get to the point where the past can say nothing about us.” In the postmodern world, people hanker to be free-floating. They want to live with the illusion that they are inventing reality…
1 Peter 3:13-22
Back in the 19th century the Know-Nothing political party came into existence at least partly to demand that the government curb what many American Protestants perceived at the time to be an alarming increase in Roman Catholic immigration to this country. And fifty-seven years ago Senator John F. Kennedy had to appear before a convention…
John 14:1-14
In the flow of John’s Gospel, what we see in John 14 takes place before the crucifixion. Yet in the Year A Lectionary we read this a month after Good Friday and in the Eastertide season. So what do we see here in John 14 that is startlingly instructive? As we will note, the disciples…
1 Peter 2:2-10
Whatever you may think about the musical group The Beatles, it is generally acknowledged that few bands have ever paid as much attention to the lonely, invisible people of society as did The Beatles. Two of their songs carry a particular poignancy in this regard. One haunting tune is titled “Nowhere Man.” The song talks…
Psalm 23
On this Fourth Sunday after Easter, all three years of the lectionary cycle have us reading Psalm 23. No wonder some parts of the worldwide church call this Good Shepherd Sunday. It is always good to revisit this beloved piece of pastoral poetry, but it does challenge the preacher and this writer, who wrote on…
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…
Psalm 31:9-16
There are two ways to commemorate Palm Sunday, according to the Lectionary. We can focus on the Palms and celebrate a day of victory filled with Hosannas. That was my focus last year (see the Sermon Commentary for March 20, 2016). Or we can focus on the Passion going on beneath the Hosannas. That is…
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…
Colossians 1:11-20
Let no preacher be blasé about these verses from Colossians 1. Let no one miss the punch, the power, the sheer wonder of what Paul says here. Those who have long known the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith could, I suppose, skate over top of these verses altogether too lightly and swiftly without noticing…
2 Timothy 1:1-14
It is all at once so clear and yet so paradoxical. The opening verses of Paul’s second letter to Timothy are at once soaring in their reveling in God’s power and grace and yet brutally honest in talking about the suffering the gospel sometimes brings to its best heralds. Paul can see it so clearly:…
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…
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
I suspect that were Jeremiah 4 not on the Lectionary schedule, few preachers and teachers would be willing to tackle it. After all, among other reasons, relatively few of us like to talk about the kind of divine judgment it so graphically describes. What’s more, its grim apocalyptic imagery resists easy understanding and application. Of…
2 Kings 5:1-14
Nearly everyone needs some kind of healing. It may be from physical or mental illness. Or perhaps it’s from haunted memories or grief. Yet while God’s people know to look to God for that healing, we don’t always get to choose its method. So we may not always particularly like the way God chooses to…
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…
John 14:23-29
Jesus kept saying it, kept repeating it that night: Let not your hearts be troubled. But it’s difficult to imagine a more troubling context in which to try to say such a thing! Jesus kept talking about peace, but all hell was about to break loose on Jesus and on his band of followers. In…
Revelation 7:9-17
Depending on your church tradition, you may or may not be familiar with a glorious traditional hymn titled “By the Sea of Crystal.” I grew up singing the hymn quite often, including at a good many of the funerals I have attended. It is often sung near the end of funerals and has been known…
Psalm 31:9-16
At first glance, this is not a good choice for a Palm Sunday text. I mean, how do we connect David’s feeling that “there is terror on every side” with Jesus’ experience of being surrounded by an adoring crowd shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David?” But when the lectionary reminds us that this is…
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Those who try to say something authoritative about the Lord had better have a really good reason for doing so. After all, few tasks are, more intimidating than trying to faithfully proclaim God’s Word. In fact, most preachers and teachers know the fear that sometimes chases them right up to the pulpit or lectern. Scholars…
Luke 13:1-9
Someday I’d like it explained to me why the Lectionary would assign the final verses of a chapter for the week prior to looking at its first 9 verses. Nobody reads the Bible backwards like that so it’s not the least bit clear to me why preaching it this way makes any sense, either. In…
Genesis 16:1-6
Comments, Observations, Questions to Consider Hagar is revered by 2 billion people walking the earth right now as a “mother of the faith.” Perhaps no other woman besides Mary herself has as many people who honor her. But what are we to make of Hagar’s story? The apostle Paul in Galatians 5 uses Hagar as…
1 Peter 4:1-11
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider: Both new Christians and suffering Christians wonder “what kind of life have I gotten into?” In the first half of chapter 4 (our text), Peter addresses the worldview issues of the new believer; in the second half, the worry issues of the suffering one. These former pagans learn this…
Exodus 5:1-9
Comments and Observations Adding insult to injury. We have phrases like this in our English usage, which remind us that sometimes life gets worse before it gets better, if it gets better at all. It’s a fact of life that there are times when we think things can’t get any worse, and yet they can,…
2 Corinthians 2:12-3:6
The gospel brings trials and trouble and in life. Paul has suffered greatly for the sake of the gospel and because of this there are those who doubt his apostolic authority. Paul in vss. 12-13 describes the burden on his heart for the church. There is cause for thanks however. If you choose to take…
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…
Isaiah 43:1-7
Scholars tell us that there may have been at least two, probably three (perhaps four!) “Isaiahs” whose prophetic words make up the one Old Testament book we call Isaiah. If so, then the version of Isaiah we get in this 43rd chapter is definitely the “Happy Isaiah” as compared to the doom-and-gloom Isaiah from earlier…
Acts 20:7-38
Circumstances and Vision: In September, 2012, nine months after being named the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, Chuck Pagano was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia (a cancer of the white blood cells). After coaching only three games as a head coach, Pagano took an indefinite leave of absence in order to undergo treatments at…
Micah 5:2-5a
When the Lectionary dishes up just 3.5 verses, skipping the first verse of a chapter and stopping just halfway through the fifth verse, you just know it’s like putting blinders on us readers to keep us from seeing something on either side of the lection. I don’t know why they made this choice but lyric…
Hebrews 7:23-28
Comments and Observations The Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, and the recent sex scandals in the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church will make this text (and much of Hebrews) a real challenge to preach. With its emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, the Reformation made the intercession of human priests unnecessary. All believers…
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Comments, Observations, and Questions And they lived happily ever after . . . Really? Is it really possible that the Bible’s most troubled (and at times most torturous) book has the proverbial “happy ending”? Did Disney take over this project at some point?! At first glance you might think so. Job replies to God that…
Psalm 22:1-15
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Psalm 22 is a psalm of lament that expresses the poet’s anguish at his enemies’ relentless and ferocious attacks on him. It contains the kind of honesty with God that 21st century Christians seem sometimes reluctant to express. So how does such a lament fit into the season of…
Job 23:1-9; 16-17
Comments and Observations: If you read the John Grisham novel The Firm, you may recall the horrifying moment when a young lawyer and his wife discover that the house so “generously” provided to them by the young man’s law firm is bugged to the hilt. Every conversation they had had, every lovemaking sigh, every TV…
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Comments and Observations “Be specific! Show, Don’t Tell!” Those are fairly common pieces of advice from me when I grade student sermons. Generalities, undefined words like “this” or “that,” brief lists that quickly conclude with “and so on” or “et cetera” just don’t cut it. The concrete and the specific always trump the vague and…
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Professional football players are the best at it, I think. Picture the chest thumping after a quarterback sack, or the trash talking after a safety intercepts a pass right in front of the league’s top receiver, or the end zone dance of a running back after a touchdown. Can you see Seattle Seahawks’ cornerback, Richard…
Psalm 9:9-20
Psalm 9:9-20 (for help with the other psalm appointed for the day, Psalm 133, please consult the April 6, 2015 commentary) It’s regrettable that the Lectionary appoints only the verses 9-20 of Psalm 9 for this particular Sunday. It’s not just, after all, that it offers only part of Psalm 9 for our consideration. It’s…
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
This is the second Sunday of what the church has traditionally called Ordinary Time. The label is misleading. It doesn’t mean that the next 6 months of the liturgical are just ordinary days, devoid of anything special, dull time, boring time, time to be endured. This is called ordinary time because the church gives each…
1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)
Growing up, Samuel had watched the old priest Eli behave like Milquetoast vis-à-vis his wretched offspring, Hophni and Phineas. Probably even as a young boy that sad spectacle was enough to make Samuel shake his head in disbelief and disgust. Eli was such a nice guy—how in the world had he raised two boys so…
John 17:6-19
Comments and Observations “You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child.” That is a saying of my former Pastoral Care colleague Ron Nydam. And he’s right. But the truth is that parents all know that as a matter of fact you cannot insure the happiness of your children. And that truth is married to another…
Psalm 31:9-16
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Psalm 31 is the prayer of a servant of God for God’s protection and deliverance from his enemies. It’s a prayer that Christians can hardly hear without thinking of Jesus Christ’s suffering and death on the cross. After all, it’s not just that the Revised Common Lectionary uses it…
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Parts of this lection are pretty well known, particularly since in the Passion section of his oratorio Messiah, G.F. Handel lifted up some of these words and set them to music. (I have personally always been struck by the way Handel turned the word “plucked” into a two-syllable word…
Psalm 30
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Psalm 30’s superscription claims it’s a song for the dedication of the temple. Yet its modern relevance seems greater than that. After all, it appears to be a song of thanksgiving to God for deliverance from a perilous situation. It doesn’t require much imagination to deduce that God has…
Matthew 6:24-34
Comments and Observations Unexpected twists arrest our attention. How often haven’t we seen a movie advertised as worth seeing because, according to the promotional ad, “You won’t believe how it ends!” or “The conclusion will leave you breathless!” Some years ago the popular movie The Sixth Sense shocked viewers around the world with an ending…
Preaching Connection: Suffering