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The word “extreme” seems to be especially popular in the language of our day. One hears of extreme sports, extreme programming, and there is a band with the name “Extreme.”  Whatever the word means in (...)

This psalm has long been one of my favorites. While it appears to have been written by an older person (verses 9, 18), the psalm taken as a whole is a prayer appropriate at any (...)

Psalm 148 is part of the Psalter’s concluding section that offers and calls for praise to the Lord. Psalms 146-150 are linked by the words “praise the Lord” that appear in the first and last (...)

Psalm 80 is a communal lament in which the worshipping community calls upon God to rescue them from trouble. The psalm features a refrain that expresses its central theme: “Restore us, O God (of hosts); (...)

Psalm 16 is a very problematic psalm, and for a gaggle of reasons: 1. Most scholars consider this to be a Song of Confidence or Trust like Psalm 23, yet it begins with a very (...)

The Psalms enrich preaching during Holy Week and Easter, even if few preachers base an entire sermon on the Psalms. Jesus prayed the Psalms from the cross, and the Gospels quote the Psalms to tell (...)

A single voice speaks to us in this text. Its words ring of agony, pain, desperation, brokenness, and great remorse. The speaker directly addresses God himself, but God says nothing. Instead, this text invites us (...)

Psalm 139 is classified as an Individual Hymn of Thanksgiving. In this genre, singers praise God for God’s goodness in delivering them from various life-threatening situations, such as illness, oppression, enemy attack, etc.  Here, the (...)

“A Mighty Fortress is Our God”–the hymn, which according to Ulrich Leupold, “more than any other epitomizes Luther’s thought and personal experience”–is a rather free paraphrase of Psalm 46. For that reason, the psalm is (...)

How can this text from Hebrews, an obscure writing in thought and language, compete with the gospel for this Sunday on Jesus’ healing of blind Bartimaeus, the one who follows Jesus “on the way” of (...)