Commentary posted on November 24, 2014

Advent 1B Sermon Commentary

 

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Mark 13:24-37 Sermon Commentary

Advent 1B

Comments and Observations: Long about the time most people are switching all of their Christmas lights on to celebrate the holiday in 2014, the Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent brings us straight to a text that points forward to a great and coming day when all the lights will go . ….

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Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 Sermon Commentary

Advent 1B

Notes and Observations You might think Psalm 80’s poet addresses Yahweh the way you’d address a napping grandfather: Wake up, Grandpa.  Listen to me.  I need you to help me.  Yet the one to whom the psalmist speaks is no drooling, doddering geriatric.  The poet clearly thinks of the Lord not only as a shepherd,…

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1 Corinthians 1:3-9 Sermon Commentary

Advent 1B

Comments, Observations, and Questions Sometimes I wonder what the inventor(s) of the Revised Common Lectionary were thinking when they chose the texts for the three year cycle.  I mean, take the reading for today, the first Sunday of Advent.  It is the very same text the RCL used for the second Sunday of Epiphany in…

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Isaiah 64:1-9 Sermon Commentary

Advent 1B

Comments, Observations, and Questions: At their honest best, biblical writers—psalmists, prophets, and others—are seldom able to call down judgment on others without also, in utter humility, admitting that when it comes right down to it, they aren’t any great spiritual shakes themselves.  You see this at the end of Psalm 139: after so many verses…

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