Deuteronomy 34:1-12 Sermon Commentary
Proper 25A
A Sunday Too Soon Looking at this reading and the liturgical calendar, I can’t help lamenting that the text has come just one Sunday too early. November 1 is celebrated, in many church traditions, as All Saints Day — an opportunity to remember our ancestors in faith. Certainly, this story of Moses on the cusp…
Psalm 1 Sermon Commentary
Proper 25A
Psalm 1 is such a positional psalm. By that I mean that from start to finish this song is all about where a person is situated and what their posture or position is. We begin with a negative litany of where a blessed person must not be. A blessed person does not walk with sinners,…
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 Sermon Commentary
Proper 25A
In verse 4’s heart of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson lies a perhaps largely unnoticed but most extraordinary claim: God has “entrusted” [pisteuthenai*] Jesus’ friends “with the gospel [euangelion].” No news is greater than that of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we receive with our faith. Yet the apostle audaciously…
Matthew 22:34-46 Sermon Commentary
Proper 25A
These two sections seem like odd bedfellows, as though Jesus seized the opportunity of having the Pharisees “gathered together” to give them a little food for thought. But maybe they are more connected than they seem. Are these the same Pharisees that sent their servants to challenge and entrap Jesus earlier in the chapter (last…
Matthew 22:15-22 Sermon Commentary
Proper 24A
The challengers come to Jesus feeling sly and like they have an Ace in their pocket. They leave their encounter with Jesus amazed even though they have “lost.” You’d think they had just watched a street performer do the most amazing trick they’ve ever seen! What’s probably happened, though, if they were truly listening to…
Exodus 33:12-23 Sermon Commentary
Proper 24A
Go Between The first 11 verses of chapter 33 spell out the way Moses was called by God to operate among the people. At first God indicates that Moses will need to lead the people on his own. It’s almost as if God doesn’t trust that He will be able to keep loving these hard-hearted,…
Psalm 96:1-9 Sermon Commentary
Proper 24A
In the mid-1970s when I was a boy, our congregation in Ada, Michigan, got a new minister who tended to begin worship services using Psalm 96:7-8 as his Call to Worship. Over and over and more weeks than not I heard Rev. MacLeod say, “Ascribe to the Lord . . .” multiple times. I…
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Sermon Commentary
Proper 24A
It sometimes seems as if the RCL editors had their eyes not just on the church year calendar, but also the secular one. After all, this Sunday on which Paul fills its Epistolary Lesson with expressions of thanksgiving falls between Canadian and Americans’ Thanksgiving Days. Some Thanksgiving traditions include a variation of the “What are…
Matthew 22:1-14 Sermon Commentary
Proper 23A
This is the third in a series of parables targeting the temple leaders. It all started as they confronted Jesus about his authority because of the way he disrupted their domain. Jesus first challenged them to consider their obedience to God, then he challenged them to consider the way they were abusing God’s gifts 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.