Reading for Preaching
Under the Unpredictable Plant: an Exploration in Vocational Holiness
The Brothers K
Additional content related to Vocation
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
Commentary: Hear and Live “Hear” is a key word in all of Hebrew Scripture, most notably in the Shema, which is the central prayer of Judaism. Perhaps Christians might think of it also as a credal formulation. It goes like this: “hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love…
Mark 13:24-37
Advent comes in with an apocalyptic bang! This series of verses has come to be known as Mark’s “Little Apocalypse,” a snapshot of the turning point that ends this world and begins the new. I must confess that I can easily get lost in the devastating or destructive depictions in apocalyptic literature to the point…
Psalm 148
Some years back at a worship service we used St. Francis of Assisi’s poem “Canticle of the Sun” as part of a responsive reading. There was, alas, a slight typo in the bulletin that made it sound at one point as though we were worshiping Mother Earth. This led a rather conservative member of my…
Matthew 1:18-25
Comments, Questions, and Observations Oddly, we close out Advent this year with the birthing story. Matthew’s birth narrative doesn’t usually get much attention on Christmas day because it’s rather anti-climactic in comparison to the Luke’s—our tried and true Christmas story. As I discuss in the textual points section below, we don’t even get the actual…
Romans 1:1-7
Comments, Observations, and Questions Paul basically frames this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson with references to calling (1, 7a). What lies between those references forms the basis for those calls, both for the apostle and all of God’s dearly beloved people to whom the Spirit speaks through him. However, preachers who wish to talk about calling need…
Matthew 24:36-44
Comments, Questions, and Observations Here we are at the beginning of the Christian year; advent has begun, and we are reminded that we are people who are waiting. If you follow the gospel lectionary, then you know that we ended the year with a celebration of Jesus Christ and the kind of reign he has…
Jeremiah 1:4-10
It sometimes seems as though Jeremiah 1 means more to preachers than to average church-goers. There is something about this pre-natal call to ministry—not to mention the lyric image of God’s filling the prophet’s mouth with his Word—that strikes a chord for lots of us who preach. But since the church long ago began to…
1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
Sample sermon: When I go to different parts of the U.S. or Canada to speak or to preach, I often travel alone. When I do, I sometimes enjoy going out to eat by myself at a restaurant. It can be very interesting just to watch people and observe what is going on in ways you…
John 21:1-19
Perhaps like you, most of the times that I have preached this text I have honed in on Peter being re-rooted in Christ and commissioned for what will come in his life and ministry. So, this year I’m focusing on what happens to the group of disciples, Peter included. It helps that our text today…
Jeremiah 1:4-10
My wife mentions this semi-often as an item of some consternation. The issue is vocation, “calling,” and it crops up in conversation between the two of us whenever someone asks me once again to tell my “call story” to be a minister or in case some other preacher—in the course of a sermon perhaps—tells her…
Psalm 146
The Lectionary likes Psalm 146 a lot and so it comes up with some frequency, including only 2 short months ago the first Sunday in September. The last couple of times that I wrote a commentary on Psalm 146 were pretty similar but this week I will take it in a different direction. If you…
John 1:43-51
Sample Sermon: “The Child’s Leading” Don’t you wish sometimes you could have been there, could have seen them in person? I mean the disciples and, of course, Jesus himself. You hear people say things like that once in a while. Wouldn’t it have been something to have been able to meet Peter, to shake Matthew’s…
Exodus 3:1-15
And, now, for the third and most important actor in the drama that unfolds in the book of Exodus. In last week’s reading from Exodus 1 and 2 we met the villain, Pharaoh, and the hero, Moses. Now we meet the director, producer, creator, redeemer– God, Yahweh, “I am what I am.” God is mentioned…
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Sometimes it feels as though the Lectionary has a mild case of Alzheimer’s, because it seems to forget that we just talked about a certain text, just a few months ago. Now here it is again in the cycle of readings. That’s the case on this Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, deep in the heart of…
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Where besides Acts 1 does Matthias’ name appear in the Scriptures? The answer is, of course, “Nowhere.” After all, as quickly as Matthias appears in Acts 1, he disappears again. Yet while that might render him as little more than a biblical footnote, it’s one of Acts 1’s details that may be an avenue to…
Exodus 12:1-14
Comments and Observations If you assign the average high school student to read the unabridged version of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick and then ask the student about it, the odds are good that the first thing he or she will talk about will not be the story. At its core Moby Dick tells an…
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
We all struggle with sin and temptation and so we need to heed the challenges of Scripture when it advises us on how to lead God-glorifying lives. It would be merely self-deceptive and tinged with no small amount of hubris for us to dispense with any parts of God’s Word on the premise that we…
Jeremiah 1:4-10
My wife mentions this semi-often. For her, it’s a combination of envy and consternation. The issue is vocation, “calling,” and it crops up in conversation between the two of us whenever someone asks me once again to tell my “call story” to be a minister or in case some other preacher—in the course of a…
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: Vocation