Mark 1:4-11
Epiphany 1B
Comments and Observations: Fans of Peter Jackson’s films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy will recall the opening sequence in the final film, The Return of the King (all this years before Jackson’s—in my humble opinion—disastrous return to Tolkien in his Hobbit trilogy!). As the movie opens, we are taken back hundreds of years…
Psalm 29
Epiphany 1B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider Psalm 29 is a hymn of praise to the God of creation. It’s a rather “noisy” psalm that the poet fills with the sounds of praise, thunder, wind and even the sound that earthquakes make. It’s a psalm that the psalmist also fills with vivid images of angels around…
Acts 19:1-7
Epiphany 1B
Although this reading from Acts 19 may initially seem an odd selection for the church’s celebration of the Baptism of Jesus, it is actually very fitting. For one thing, it is a sequel to the Gospel reading for today, the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist as told in Mark 1. Here in our…
Genesis 1:1-5
Epiphany 1B
Comments and Observations “The first day.” That is how this Year B Lectionary text concludes. There was a morning and there was an evening and together they constituted “the first day.” Of course, even in the text of Genesis it’s difficult to know just what that means. Within the sequence of just these first 5…
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Epiphany 2B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider The poet begins by professing, O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. In doing so she recognizes that God knows human beings perfectly. So the Lord doesn’t just know when people get up and when they sit down. God even knows our most secret thoughts. The…
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Epiphany 2B
Comments and Observations Over the last quarter-century, audio, visual, and computer technology has advanced more rapidly than our ability to prevent these gizmos from taking over the minds of our youth (and of some of us not-so-young too!!). Not so long ago, parents who wanted to monitor what their kids saw or listened to had…
Mark 1:14-20
Epiphany 3B
Comments and Observations If Mark were a Broadway play, then the first 13 verses are like the overture. As we come to verse 14, the curtain is about to go up on the drama and when it does we see . . . Galilee. We’re not in a bigger city like Jerusalem or Sepphoris or…
Psalm 62:5-12
Epiphany 3B
Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider The author of Psalm 62 is clearly under some kind of duress whose cause he hints at, but doesn’t specifically identify. That lack of specificity makes this psalm’s sentiment something to which anyone under some kind of duress can relate. Whether what harasses us is individual, communal or even…
Mark 1:21-28
Epiphany 4B
It was the Sabbath and so, naturally, the Jews of Capernaum went to the synagogue. Some of them went sleepily, others went with a great weariness following a busy week of work. Still others trekked over in a rather irritable mood for who knows why–maybe it had been no more than that they were out…
Psalm 111
Epiphany 4B
You don’t have to read many sermons to notice that at least some pastors are vulnerable to a kind of moralism that focuses on the “do’s” and “do not’s” of the Christian faith. We sometimes want to leap right to what God wants people to do before contemplating who that God is and what God…
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