Romans 7:15-25a Sermon Commentary
Proper 9A
Both Benjamin Franklin and George Washington reportedly quoted Edwin Sandys’ insistence, “Honesty is the best policy.” Yet this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson may make its proclaimers wonder if honesty is really the best policy. Some of Jesus’ followers like to quote Scriptural passages such as Psalm 38:18 as insisting confession is “good for the soul.” Yet…
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 Sermon Commentary
Proper 9A
Commentator’s Note: The genius of the latter half of Genesis is the way it tells stories of fascinating characters — interesting to us not primarily because they are foreign or strange but precisely because we see our own families, stories, dramas, traumas and redemptions on display. Over the next two weeks, I’ve written a narrative,…
Psalm 145:8-14 Sermon Commentary
Proper 9A
Psalm 145 occurs twice in each of the Revised Common Lectionary’s Years of A, B, and C. But it’s never the whole psalm for some reason. This Year A reading carves out some of the middle of this song while other assigned lections in other years include the first verses, the last verses, the middle…
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 Sermon Commentary
Proper 9A
Over the next number of weeks the lectionary will be giving us pairs of verses that skip over sections. Although some of us will feel relieved to not have to address things like the “woes” that are in verses 20-24 of chapter 11, some of us might feel like an interpretative angle has been forced…
Romans 6:12-23 Sermon Commentary
Proper 8A
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson invites Jesus’ friends to think of both sin and salvation in perhaps fresh ways. In it, after all, Paul reminds Rome’s Christians that sin is not, as some Christians assume, just an activity. Sin is also a power. What’s more, as the apostle shows in Romans 6, salvation is not just…
Genesis 22:1-14 Sermon Commentary
Proper 8A
This is one of the simplest stories in the whole Bible. That may surprise you but it’s true. From the standpoint of Hebrew language — vocabulary, grammar, syntax, that sort of thing — this story is remarkably straight-forward. In fact, for this reason, many beginning Hebrew students are assigned this text for their first translation…
Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18 Sermon Commentary
Proper 8A
Across its somewhat sprawling 52 verses, Psalm 89 has a little bit of everything. We begin with the first 4 verses assigned by this Year A lection with vows to praise God across the generations (something we will read again next week in Psalm 145). Then there is a whole section on the splendors of…
Matthew 10:40-42 Sermon Commentary
Proper 8A
The lectionary gives us a whole sermon to focus on what translators like to label as the “Rewards” section of Jesus’s mission instructions. What a misleading title! I mean, it makes sense why we like the title: who doesn’t like a prize? And we’ve also been chugging along for a few weeks now listening to…
Romans 6:1b-11 Sermon Commentary
Proper 7A
There are enormous stakes involved in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. It, after all, deals with matters of life and death. But not just life and death in the conventional sense. Paul also speaks of life and death at their deepest levels. He names and describes the life that leads to death, as well as the…
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.