Jeremiah 31:1-6 Sermon Commentary
Easter Day A
Illustration: Have you ever experienced a moment when time stood still? Maybe you were afraid to breathe for fear of breaking the magic of the moment. It’s the stuff of hospital bedsides – the passing on of death and the passing into life of birth. It’s the good news of a proposal, the announcement of…
Jeremiah 31:7-14 Sermon Commentary
Christmas 2A
Commentary: A Bittersweet Moment The first Sunday of the new year can feel like a bittersweet time for people who have just prepared for Christmas—baking, hosting, buying, wrapping, sending—within an inch of their lives. I’m mindful of empty nesters whose homes were a little less empty. For families who rarely see one another traveling, being…
Jeremiah 31:27-34 Sermon Commentary
Proper 24C
New Covenant For Christian readers, this Lectionary selection emerges out of Hebrew Scripture as though with giant flashing arrows and neon signs lighting up the name: “JESUS!” Here he is and here is the goal of his ministry laid out neatly before us. This notion of a “new covenant” is laid out and explained in…
Jeremiah 31:7-14 Sermon Commentary
Christmas 2C
Illustration: Imagine the crankiest person you know. Don’t say their name out loud. Perhaps it is a character from fiction: Eeyore, Ron Swanson, Debbie Downer or the Grinch. Perhaps someone in real life like Simon Cowell on America’s Got Talent. Now imagine Eeyore with a smile, Ron Swanson giggling, Debbie Downer with a soundtrack of…
Jeremiah 31:31-34 Sermon Commentary
Lent 5B
Comments, Observations and Questions: Hearing “New Covenant” with the Ears of Ancient Israel The Israelites are in exile. The consequences of their disobedience and failure to keep their side of the bargain haunt them everyday — in the foreign language, customs, foods and, most grievously, religions of Babylon. So Jeremiah, who is often called the…
Jeremiah 31:27-34 Sermon Commentary
Proper 24C
I am not sure why the Revised Common Lectionary’s series of passages from Jeremiah skips around the way it does (one week Jeremiah 32 but then next time around it’s back to chapter 29 and now we leap to chapter 31) but I think I can understand why the Lectionary saved this passage from the…
Jeremiah 31:7-14 Sermon Commentary
2nd Sunday after Christmast C
You can’t accuse the Old Testament prophets of not being specific enough when it came to describing the blessings of God’s salvation! Sometimes believers today content themselves with generic or generalized descriptions of felicity in “heaven,” sometimes not advancing in their views of the New Creation much beyond the wispy, cloudy, ethereal realm that New…
Jeremiah 31:31-34 Sermon Commentary
Lent 5B
This remarkably sunny text may seem a peculiar choice for the dark journey of Lent, unless we see it in the light of theme of covenant on which the RCL has been focusing during this Lenten season. We began with God’s covenant with Noah and all of nature, the covenant on which all life on…
Jeremiah 31:7-14 Sermon Commentary
Christmas 2B
It takes so long for Christmas to get here. We wait and wait through the long season of Advent for the coming of the Lord. Then in one day we celebrated his coming, and we’re done. No wonder many non-liturgical Christians simply ignore Advent and spend a month celebrating Christmas. Such a miraculous event deserves…
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