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…
1 Peter 2:2-10 Sermon Commentary
Easter 5A
God uses God’s image-bearers’ race, gender, history and other things to shape who we are. Yet while those factors help form us, Jesus’ friends don’t find our central identity in them. We are first and foremost what Peter refers to in verse 10 as “the people of God [laos Theou*].” By professing that, the apostle…
Acts 7:55-60 Sermon Commentary
Easter 5A
The Lectionary text is only 5 verses long but it is in the context of one and a half chapters telling us the story of Stephen. Making connections to the five verses in the Lectionary, I will use my commentary to tell this larger story. Illustration Reformation scholar Kenneth Woo’s newly released book, Refugee Calvin,…
John 14:1-14 Sermon Commentary
Easter 5A
As I spend more time journeying with Jesus, I’m coming to realize that Thomas’s question, “How can we know the way?” could be read in any number of ways. There’s the literal reading that sounds a bit like a prayer in the fog: “Lord, we don’t see the road that you’re telling us to take,…
John 10:1-10 Sermon Commentary
Easter 4A
The lectionary calendar separates Jesus healing the man born blind (chapter 9) with Jesus’s “I am” proclamation here at the beginning of chapter 10 by a number of weeks—the first being in Lent and now here in Easter. A quick review of the man’s experience of being kicked out of the synagogue makes it pretty…
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.