Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35 Sermon Commentary
Easter 7A
Regular readers of my commentaries here on the CEP website know that I generally frown upon the Lectionary’s tendency to delete certain portions of passages. Usually the stuff the RCL skips over pertains to judgment and the like but since we cannot get a fully rounded picture of God’s views toward sin and evil without…
John 17:1-11 Sermon Commentary
Easter 7A
Jesus speaks the heart of the Trinity out loud in prayer for the disciples to hear. He speaks in the third person about himself at the beginning, but very quickly moves more passionately, intimately, and emphatically into the first person. This only deepens the significance of the words’ revelation about the heart of God. And…
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 Sermon Commentary
Easter 7A
It can be tempting to reduce discipleship to a kind of spiritual formula. “If we just do this and that good thing,” Jesus’ friends sometimes seem to assume, “then God will do that good thing.” This, however, reverses the biblical equation. More often, because God does this good thing, the Spirit equips us to do…
Acts 1:6-14 Sermon Commentary
Easter 7A
It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday After the miracle of Christ’s ascension, it took a little while for folks to move on. A bit like Peter who wanted to build shelters on the Mount of Transfiguration, now the apostles’ feet are frozen on the Mount of Olives. So much so, that it took…
John 14:15-21 Sermon Commentary
Easter 6A
We are in the Easter season and we’ve spent the better part of it remembering all of the different ways that Jesus spoke of the Easter power to come even while he was still here with his disciples. We pick up this week right where we left off last week. Jesus called himself the way,…
1 Peter 3:13-22 Sermon Commentary
Easter 6A
After hearing the Boy Scouts’ founder Robert Baden-Powell say the Scouts’ motto was “Be prepared,” someone reportedly asked him, “Prepared for what?” The founder allegedly answered, “Why, for any old thing.” In fact, in his manual, Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell wrote that to be prepared means “you are always in a state of readiness in…
Acts 17:22-31 Sermon Commentary
Easter 6A
Trouble in the Text The Apostle Paul had just taken the express train out of Berea. The Christians there showed him wonderful hospitality but the religious zealots from nearby Thessaloniki came into town to rough him up. So his peeps bundled him off to Athens, where Scripture tells us, he was waiting for Silas and…
Psalm 66:8-20 Sermon Commentary
Easter 6A
Psalm 66 requires a bit of a theological balancing act. On the one hand most of this song is a pretty straightforward expression of thanksgiving to God for delivering the psalmist from plights of various kinds. The songwriter had passed through a season of suffering. And so he cried out to God to save him. …
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 Sermon Commentary
Easter 5A
For the most part Psalm 31 sounds just one primary note across its 24 verses. So although the Lectionary has chopped it up to carve out the opening 5 verses and then 2 verses closer to the middle of the song, the main theme and imagery of the psalm are still visible. In the verses…
Sermon Commentary Library
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