Psalm 23
Easter 4C
What a wonderful change of emphasis Psalm 23 brings to this season of Easter. For the second and third Sundays of the Easter season, the lectionary readings from the Psalms helped to praise and thank God for his work of salvation culminating in Christ’s resurrection. Now on this fourth Sunday after Easter, the lectionary […]
Revelation 1:4-8
Easter 2C
The Sunday after Easter (sometimes even called “Low Sunday”) can feel a bit anti-climactic. In 2016 April 3 is also the start of Spring Break for many schools in the United States and so attendance may be notably down in many North American congregations, especially compared to the prior Sunday when Easter no doubt […]
Psalm 114
Easter Day C
Last week our Psalm commentary was on Psalm 118, one of the options for Palm/Passion Sunday. This week the Year C Easter Psalm is 118, the only option. So for this commentary we will take up Psalm 114, which is the Psalm assigned for Easter evening. Psalm 114 is in its own way a […]
Colossians 3:1-4
Easter Day A
On that glorious first Easter morning an angel shocked people by insisting that God had raised Jesus from the dead. Two thousand years later an aging apostle may no less shock Colossians 3:1-4’s proclaimers and hearers by insisting that God also raised us with Christ. After all, if it’s sometimes hard to believe that […]
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Easter Day B
OK, lots to say about these verses but to start: What do you mean, Paul, that Jesus appeared post- Easter to 500 people at once? When in the world did THAT pretty big event happen but that is referenced nowhere else in the Bible except in passing right here in 1 Corinthians 15? How […]
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Easter Day A
[…] a Savior. Talk about your rejected stones . . . Jesus was indeed tossed aside, spurned, rejected, killed. Yet he was the One after all. On this Easter Sunday we see him raised by the power of the Father and made the head of the corner of a whole new edifice that just was […]
Mark 16:1-8
Easter 1B
[…] why end the gospel in that silence? Maybe it fits a larger theme Mark is working on. One of the most striking features of Mark’s telling of Easter is how it is framed by motion. The women begin in verses 1-4 moving toward the tomb, and they end in verse 8 moving rapidly away […]
Isaiah 25:6-9
Easter 1B
[…] repeatedly invites us to envision the shalom of God’s coming kingdom as a feast, a glorious banquet, how do we understand this? Among other things, as an Easter morning Old Testament reading—or as the preaching text for Easter evening—Isaiah 25 reminds us of several key features to the resurrection of Christ—features that we might […]
Luke 19:28-40
Palm Sunday C
[…] Twice we are told that the people doing the cheering were only Jesus’ disciples. Is this a real parade or a wannabe one? Illustration Ideas: Knowing that Easter is coming must not make us impatient to get to next Sunday morning but instead our Easter knowledge allows us to see the cross itself as […]
Romans 4:13-25
Lent 2B
[…] Jesus died, it must have seemed as if the whole world’s fate was to eventually die right along with him. But in the darkness of the first Easter, God slugged it out with the defending world champion, death. In that darkness, God crowned life the new world champion. The first Good Friday’s darkness symbolized […]
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