Psalm 126
Lent 5C
[…] these Gospel truths as being very nearly too good to be true. Perhaps for even us Christians we have become altogether too accustomed to Good Friday and Easter. Maybe we cannot imagine anymore running toward the risen Christ with such joy and abandon that our own feet very literally are not touching the ground. […]
John 10:22-30
Easter 4C
For the last 12 or so years, few names in the world have been more famous than that of Barack Obama. Not so long ago, however, that was not the case. Indeed, not so very long ago almost no one had ever heard of Obama. A scant four years before he managed to get nominated…
Psalm 23
Easter 4C
Presidential funerals always draw a huge television audience. We saw that recently with the funeral services for George H.W. Bush. We have seen it for Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon. But when you watch such services, you need not have the funeral program in your hands to guess that probably at some point…
Revelation 7:9-17
Easter 4C
“Is this heaven?” isn’t just a question an Iowa farmer poses in the movie, Field of Dreams. Readers, preachers and teachers of Revelation 7:9-17 might ask the same question of it. Does its John describe the heavenly realm as God currently configures it? Or is he describing the new earth and heaven that Jesus will…
Acts 9:36-43
Easter 4C
Reading Dr. Luke’s account of the growth of the early church is a bit like watching a frog hop from lily pad to lily pad—from Jerusalem to the Gaza Strip to Samaria to Damascus to Joppa, from Peter and John to Philip to Stephen to Paul and now back to Peter. OK, maybe the image…
Psalm 148
Easter 5C
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…
Revelation 21:1-6
Easter 5C
Christ’s revelation to the apostle John includes what sometimes seems like an endless series of chilling images. Nearly all of them portray intense persecution, bloody battles and immense suffering. It’s a revelation that, if we didn’t know its “happy ending,” we might quit reading after about six or seven chapters. Some modern Christians assume that…
John 14:23-29
Easter 6C
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…
John 17:20-26
Easter 7C
One of the most creative preachers I know who always manages to approach texts in a very fresh way is Debbie Blue. For this text, she reminds us that biblically “glory doesn’t shine, it bleeds.” You can hear that sermon by clicking here. What does Jesus mean by all his talk here about “glory”? “I…
Psalm 97
Easter 7C
A few years ago the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship produced a new hymnal based on the Psalms. Its title is “Psalms for All Seasons.” The title is apt because as most of us know, the Hebrew Psalter is a collection of varied prayers that matches life’s many and varied seasons. As C.S. Lewis and…
- « Previous
- 1
- …
- 18
- 19
- 20
Search Results: easter