I Samuel 2:18-20, 26
Christmas 1C
Acknowledging that the Hebrew Scripture text may not be everyone’s immediate choice for the Sunday after Christmas, I want to use this text as a lens on the others or, perhaps, to demonstrate reverberations and harmonies between this text and the others as a way of deepening your engagement with all the texts together. […]
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Advent 4B
Comments, Observations and Questions: Verse 16 is a glorious refrain, especially in close anticipation of Christmas Eve worship (likely less than 12 hours away). “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” The preacher might well add, “If you want to hear more, I’ll see you […]
Hebrews 2:10-18
Christmas 1A
[…] would anyone have been able to pick him out of the other babies in the nursery? Would he have been the baby who, as we sing at Christmas, made no crying? If Jesus’ friends had been choosing sides for their soccer game, would they have known how to pick Jesus out of the pack […]
Psalm 47
Easter 7B
[…] over? No, ours is a world of hatred and strife, of children shooting children on playgrounds, of cancer and leukemia, of homegrown terrorists shooting up campuses and Christmas parties. It doesn’t look like a world ruled by a good Lord. How then can we claim the truth of Ascension Day–the truth that Jesus is […]
Psalm 147:12-20
Christmas 2B
[…] a poem like this given the historical and spiritual realities we know only too well? This Psalm seems to be a favorite for the Second Sunday after Christmas as it was assigned for the first Sunday in January in the Year A Lectionary too, which last year was January 5, 2020. A year ago, […]
Psalm 84
Proper 16B
[…] to which the psalmist refers at the end of Psalm 84. Illustration Idea A few years ago my family and I visited China. Our visit stretched over Christmas Day. As we strolled around an ancient walled city among people on whose lives Christmas Day seemed to make little impact, it hardly felt to us […]
Psalm 80:1-7
Advent 4C
[…] psalm. It is filled with dark and bitter imagery. It is written from the depths of sorrow. All in all, in short, this does not feel terribly Christmas-like. Yet in 2018 this is the Psalm assigned for a scant 2 days before Christmas Day. Probably most preachers will opt for the alternative reading of […]
John 1:(1-9), 10-18
Christmas 2B
[…] has been staggeringly enough at all time highs. Maybe then this year the Lectionary text from John 1 that often gets assigned for the Second Sunday after Christmas is particularly apt and maybe in its own way hopeful. Because a lot of the time this past year we maybe had a hard time discerning […]
Mark 1:1-8
Advent 2B
[…] on, Mark, go back, get back to angels and shepherds and stars and stables and mangers and all that good stuff. This is Advent not Epiphany. It’s Christmas, for pete’s sake, and the last place we want to be in December is in the middle of some dry, dusty wilderness where someone is screaming […]
Mark 13:24-37
Advent 1B
[…] in Advent directs us to the Olivet Discourse and Jesus’ words about the end of the world, it can be a stretch to do the seemingly UN- Christmas-like thing of pointing to the end of the world. Long about the time most people are switching all of their Christmas lights on to celebrate the […]
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