Psalm 114: 1-8 (links validated 8/6/23)

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  • Sermon Starters (Easter Sunday)(B)(2024)

    by Scott Hoezee
    There is a moment in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath when the impoverished Oakie family of the Joads are riding in their jalopy on their slow trek to California, where they believe a bounty of employment opportunities awaits them. But the journey is difficult at best. Setbacks are the norm. At one point when they are traveling a difficult stretch, Ma Joad is asleep in the back of the truck with Grandma next to her. But Grandma dies early in the night, but Ma Joad knows they cannot stop at that point or risk letting the authorities know they had a corpse with them. So Ma stays next to Grandma’s dead body all night. The next day when the family discovers what happened, Steinbeck tells us not that they were surprised or astonished at Ma Joad’s strength. Instead he said the other family members were afraid of Ma’s strength. What a curious way to put it (Steinbeck was good at that). When you come into contact with someone whose heft of character and depth of strength are powerful, you recoil a little in fear, in awe. If that can happen sometimes with the various people in our lives, just imagine how the Creation and we people respond to the nearness of no less than Almighty God. And that is pretty much the point of Psalm 114.

Resources from the Archives

  • Rough Translation

    by John Alsup
  • Lectionary Blog (Psalm 114)

    from Desperate Preacher
  • Sermon Starters (Easter Sunday)(B)(2021)

    by Scott Hoezee
    A rather liberal pastor who said he did not believe in the resurrection as a literal event once said that he thinks he is not the only one who does not really believe in Christ’s rising again. As proof, he said that if he actually believed in Easter, he would be running through the streets daily telling everyone he meets about it. And yet even more conservative Christians who profess a belief in the resurrection don’t spend their lives doing that kind of fervent witnessing. And so, this pastor concluded, are those who reject him for his liberalism all that different in the end? He has a point. We could counter it by saying that leading transformed lives and how that shows up in how Christians interact with all people and conduct themselves just generally at home and at school and at work is itself a witness to the power of Christ in us. Of course, that does not always happen smoothly or as consistently as we might want either. But the point remains: do we live and act and talk and behave in ways that show we truly believe that we live in a world where a resurrection took place? And if we can find areas of our lives that show no evidence of celebrating and leaning into that reality, what might we ask the Holy Spirit to help us do about that?
  • Proper 19A (2017)

    by Stan Mast
    It should be fairly easy to illustrate how central the absence of God is in human experience. Serious literature and film are filled with it. So is history. My “favorite” example is that horrific scene from Eli Wiesel’s classic account of the Holocaust, Night. To further subdue the Jewish prisoners in a death camp, the sadistic commandant has a child crucified in the presence of the entire camp. As they gaze in stunned horror, one agonized voice cries, “Where is God?” Another voice answers, “Up there! On that cross!”
  • Singing the Psalm

    by Dale Schoening
  • Proper 19A

    by Howard Wallace
  • Proper 19A (2002)

    by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson
  • Proper 19A (2014)

    by Wesley White

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