Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Easter 4A
In an article he wrote some years ago, theologian Neal Plantinga told the story of a choir that was rehearsing for a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. But the choir was not giving the conductor what he was looking for. As it turned out, the choir was almost too good, too professional. So the…
Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Lent 4A
We could perhaps call Psalm 23 a kind of utility player among the songs in the Hebrew Psalter. Here we are on the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Year A Lectionary but by the time we get to late April in 2026 and hit the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Psalm 23 will put in…
Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Easter 4C
Not even an hour before I sat down to begin working on this sermon commentary on Psalm 23, one of my students preached an in-class sermon on Jesus’s Parable of the Lost Sheep from Luke 15. She reminded us in the course of the sermon that there are connections between that parable and the I…
Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Proper 11B
Lately I have been in a phase of life where green pastures and still waters seem far away. And though dark-ish valleys have seemed all-too-real, the prospect of being exalted over my foes likewise seems a ways off just now. Maybe you as a preacher feel this way too. I have been out of the…
Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Easter 4B
Across the years I have written sermon commentaries on Psalm 23 so often that I am fairly certain I have little new or creative to say that has not been conveyed in one way, shape, or form before! It also does not help that this may be the single most familiar psalm of them all. …
Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Proper 23A
Psalm 23 bears a lot of resemblance to any number of poems in the Hebrew Psalter. This is not the only sunny-side-up psalm that exudes confidence at every turn. It is not the only psalm to use pastoral imagery or to invoke the specter of “enemies” in whose presence God will vindicate the psalmist. Yet…
Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Easter 4A
It’s not quite true but sometimes it feels like Psalm 23 pops up in the Lectionary every couple weeks. In fact, this psalm really was assigned just a few weeks ago during Lent. Psalm 23 pops up at least once—and usually twice—inside any given calendar across Years A, B, and C of the Lectionary. And…
Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Lent 4A
Psalm 23 is hands-down the most famous of the 150 psalms in the Psalter. In terms of recognizability, Psalm 23 is probably right up there with popular ditties like “Roses are red, violets are blue,” with Shakespearean sonnets like “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” and well-known song lyrics like “Happy birthday to…
Psalm 23 Sermon Commentary
Easter 4C
Presidential funerals always draw a huge television audience. We have seen it for Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and most recently for George H.W. Bush. But when you watch such services, you need not have the funeral program in your hands to guess that probably at some point some pastor is going to…
Sermon Commentary Library
Our weekly sermon commentaries are Lectionary-based, which across its three-year cycle, encompass a vast array of biblical texts. Filter the Sermon Commentary Library to search Scripture texts by book and chapter to find commentary, illustrations, and reflections to spark ideas.
Looking for something else? View our Heidelberg Catechism sermon resources and our Reformed Connections to the RCL section that traces Lectionary texts to specific parts of the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession.