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 4 Sermon Commentary
Easter 3B
Psalm 4 isn’t necessarily the cheeriest Hebrew poem to consider during the otherwise joyful season of Eastertide. Though it ends on an up-beat note, it is also a plea, a lament, a rebuke, and a challenge. But maybe we need to encounter such realities in the midst of this Eastertide season just as much as…
Psalm 133 Sermon Commentary
Easter 2B
Come on and admit it: I am not the only one tempted to insert one more adverb into the opening verse of Psalm 133: “How good and pleasant and rare it is when God’s people live together in unity.” We are painfully aware of why the temptation to insert “rare” exists today. Too many congregations…
Psalm 114 Sermon Commentary
Easter Day B
The Lectionary assigned parts of Psalm 118 for both Palm/Passion Sunday and Easter and since the March 24 sermon commentary here on the CEP website was on Psalm 118, I will direct you to look that up in our Sermon Commentary Library. But for this commentary we will take the psalm for Year B Easter…
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 Sermon Commentary
Palm Sunday B
By the end of Psalm 118 it is easy to see why the Lectionary would connect these words with Palm Sunday. The imagery of a festal throng of people going up to the Temple waving tree branches exuberantly in the air makes this fit the traditional ways we picture the events of Jesus’s entrance into…
Psalm 51:1-12 Sermon Commentary
Lent 5B
For the fifth Sunday in Lent, the Year B Lectionary serves up a quintessential Lenten-type psalm in the well-known words of Psalm 51. In preaching classes I always say to my students to not make too big of a deal over any superscriptions that accompany some psalms. In this case it is the superscription that…
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 Sermon Commentary
Lent 4B
Psalm 107:2 invites people to tell their stories. Ironically no sooner does that begin to happen in this poem and the Lectionary has us stop reading to jump over a lot of the stories that get told! Truth is, Psalm 107 is semi-repetitive but it is structured that way to make a point about the…
Psalm 19 Sermon Commentary
Lent 3B
A friend of mine is a professional physicist and astronomer and I have always enjoyed talking with her about astronomy as I have long been an amateur astronomy aficionado. If we are blessed enough to experience it, there is nothing quite so breathtaking as being far away from any sources of light pollution so as…
Psalm 22:23-31 Sermon Commentary
Lent 2B
Considering that a portion of Psalm 22 is assigned to the Second Sunday in Lent, it seems odd that the Revised Common Lectionary would select for us not the first two-thirds of the psalm that is a whopping lament but instead the sunny-side-up concluding verses. Psalm 22 almost seems like it’s two separate poems. We…
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.