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Isaiah 35:1-10

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

This passage has many affinities with the prophecies of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), and it has often been attributed to him. But there are differences. In Isaiah 40:3, the “way” is for the Lord, here it is for the redeemed and ransomed (vv. 9-10). In Isaiah 51:11, the reference is to the return from Babylonian exile. Here in verse 10, that context is missing, and those who are returning to Zion ...

2. A Messianic King

Isaiah 11:1-10

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

This passage is part of the larger section of Isaiah 10:5—11:16, that portrays the defeat of Assyria, the gathering of the remnant of Israel that was deported to Assyria in 721 B.C., and the defeat of Israel’s enemies. Specifically, it deals with the future ideal time, when Israel’s messianic king will rule in a blessed kingdom of peace. Our word for messiah comes from the Hebrew masiah, which me...

3. A Reassuring Prophecy

Isaiah 7:10-16

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

“O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64:1). When we contemplate the evil and violence in our world, that is often our plea — for God to come down and to set things right. We need the power of God that can put down tyrants, the love of God that can replace hatred with mercy, the forgiveness of God that can wipe out all the guilty past and restore our hearts and the hearts of...

4. Ascension of Our Lord

Acts 1:1-11

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

As we all know, the book of the Acts of the Apostles forms the second volume, as it were, of Luke's writing. In the Gospel, he has told the account of Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection. Now he begins the account of the growth of the early church by the power of the Holy Spirit. To begin his second volume, however, Luke repeats some of the things he has said at the end of the Gospel stor...

5. Can These Bones Live?

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

This famous vision of the Valley of Dry Bones is given to the prophet Ezekiel in Babylonia shortly after the fall of Jerusalem to Babylonia in 587 B.C. As in 1:3 and 8:1, the prophet is seized “by the hand of the Lord,” that is, he is sent into an ecstatic state in which he is given to see new reality. Israel considers itself to be dead in exile (cf. 33:10; Isaiah 53:8-9). She has lost her land, ...

6. Commandments of Conduct

Nehemiah 7:73b--8:18

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

We live in a society in which right and wrong have become largely a matter of personal opinion. All individuals are seen as a law unto themselves, and what is right for one person is not necessarily right for anyone else. Indeed, if any person tries to impose their ethical standards on another, the response is usually defensive anger. "Don't try to impose your middle-class morality on me," goes th...

7. Endings

Isaiah 43:14-28

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

Endings can be sad. Your son calls you unexpectedly from college and wants nothing more than to tell you about his studies and his new girlfriend, and you're sad when the call has to end. Or you attend the symphony and are swept up by the glorious music and are very sorry when the finale comes. But of course, those are temporary endings. Other endings are much more permanent. I just retired from ...

8. Evaluating Our Names

Isaiah 62:1-12

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

For those who like to preach from all three lectionary texts, the stated readings for this Sunday could cause a preacher great perplexity. How on earth do they all fit together? The Epistle lesson deals with the variety of gifts given by the Spirit to the church. The Gospel lesson recounts Jesus' first "sign" at the wedding at Cana, when the water turned into wine, became the symbol of his blood p...

9. Following Summons

Acts 9:32-43

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

A number of subsidiary themes emerge in this reading from Acts, and we probably should take note of them, although they do not form the main thrust of the text. We have here a brief story of a Hebrew woman given the Aramaic name of Tabitha, which means "gazelle," or called Dorcas in the Greek. This is the only mention that we have of Dorcas in the scripture, but over the centuries, her reputation...

10. God Shows No Partiality

Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

We have a crowd here today on this Easter Sunday. Churches are always crowded on Easter. As the prophet Isaiah would say, the multitudes literally trample the courts of God. And we are glad you all have come. A lot of different reasons have led us here, of course. For those of us who worship regularly in this church, Easter Sunday is the crown and climax of the Christian year. For others, who do ...

11. God's Battle Against Sin

Zephaniah 1:1-3

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

Can we believe that God is carrying on a war against all sinners? He is, of course, according to the scriptures. Jeremiah gives us pictures of God attacking his sinful people in the form of that mysterious Foe from the North (Jeremiah chapters 4-6). Ezekiel declares that there is a breach in our wall of defense, caused by our sin, and that the role of a true prophet is to go up into that breach an...

12. God's Messenger

Malachi 2:17--3:5

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

If we read the Old Testament in tandem with the New Testament, we sometimes have to employ a double focus. Verse 1 of our passage promises that God will send a messenger ahead to prepare the way of his coming. And that is certainly true when we look toward Christmas. God gives all sorts of preparatory signs before Jesus Christ is born in Bethlehem. An angel choir announces to shepherds that the on...

13. Growing with God

1 Samuel 2:12-26

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

There are times in the life of the world or of a nation when one individual changes the whole course of history. Perhaps we might say that such a change occurred when the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire. Certainly we could agree that Martin Luther introduced an entirely new era when his actions initiated the Protestant reformation. And we m...

14. Living by a Promise

Genesis 15:1-18

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

The preacher who confronts the three stated texts for this Sunday once again faces the confusing situation of wondering how on earth the three lessons are related. Perhaps several answers are possible, but to my mind, all three of them have to do with living by a promise. In the context of our Genesis text, Abraham and Sarah and their households have obeyed the command of God and left Ur of the C...

15. Old and New Commandments

Exodus 34:29-35

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

Perhaps some of you have seen Michelangelo's great marble statue of Moses. Or if you have just seen a picture of that statue, you know that it depicts Moses sitting, holding the tablets of the law. And strangely enough, on Moses' head are two tiny horns. That depiction furnishes us with a good lesson in the history of Old Testament manuscripts. The verb "shone" in verse 29 of our text can also be ...

16. Our Sin Against God

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

The first thing we should realize about our texts from Genesis is that they are intended as depictions of our life with God. The Hebrew word for “Adam” means “humankind,” and the writer of Genesis 2-3 is telling us that this is our story, that this is the way we all have walked with our Lord. Thus we learn from Genesis 2 that while we were created in the most intimate fashion by God and given his...

17. Passing From Old to New

Joshua 5:13--6:27

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

Christians live under new conditions. Paul tell us in the Epistle lesson for this Sunday that the old life has been done away and that the new life has begun. We are new creations of God. There are all sorts of metaphors that the Bible uses to describe that Christian passage from old to new. It says that we have been born anew, or that we have passed from slavery into freedom. It proclaims that we...

18. Passover and The Lord's Supper

Exodus 12:1-30

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

The same Old Testament text is used for Maundy Thursday in all three cycles of the lectionary. The preacher may therefore wish to consult the expositions in Cycles A and B along with this one. In the oldest tradition that we have of the celebration of the Lord's Supper, Paul tells us in our Epistle lesson that on the night he was betrayed, Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples. While P...

19. Peter's Vision

Acts 11:1-18

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

This story about Peter's mission to the Gentiles continues the account that began in 10:1, and it repeats in greater detail the content of Peter's vision that was already mentioned in 10:9-16. It is a remarkable story, because it treats rather lightly a dispute that was widespread in the New Testament church, the dispute over conditions to be laid upon Gentile converts to the faith. The apostles ...

20. Portrayal of Holiness

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

We use the word "holy" a lot. We talk about the Holy Bible or the Holy Ghost, a holy place, or a holy person. Roman Catholics call their pope "His Holiness," which is the title of a book about John Paul II. And we sense that when some things or some persons are called "holy," there is a different aura about them. Somehow they seem set apart from our profane, everyday life, and we are tempted to sp...

21. Promises, Promises

Jeremiah 33:1-26

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

Promises are so important! We know, for example, that when we make a child a promise, we must keep it at all costs, or the child will lose all trust in us and our word. We also know that if we do not keep a promise to a friend, we may lose that friendship. Certainly we make promises through all our life. One of the most important ones is made when we stand before a minister to be married. There w...

22. Responding to the Story

Deuteronomy 26:1-15

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

Our biblical, Christian faith is basically a response to a story, to the story of what God has done in human history. It is not as if Christians through the ages have looked at the natural world and decided that there must be a God who created it. They have not thought up a picture of God and designed worship to go with the picture. Nor have they adjusted to their changing cultural and social situ...

23. Return and Be Forgiven

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

On this third Sunday in Lent, all three of our lessons have to do with repentance, but we will look at that specifically in our Isaiah text. Verses 8 and 9 of our Old Testament lesson tell us about the absolute otherness of God. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, says the Lord." That is a revelation that we need to remember whenever we try to identify the Lord with...

24. Return to the Father

Joel 2:12-17

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

Karl Barth once remarked that the greatest tragedy in human life would be to come to the end of our days and to realize that we have been totally worthless in the purpose of God. Or in the thought of our Epistle lesson, at the end to realize that God has poured out his grace on us through all our years, and yet we have done nothing with it (2 Corinthians 6:1). It is that "end" that the prophet Jo...

25. Salvation Oracle

Isaiah 43:1-13

Sermon

Elizabeth Achtemeier

The subject for this Sunday, as set forth in the accompanying New Testament texts, is baptism, the baptism of Jesus in Luke, and the baptism of the Samaritan disciples in Acts. Let us therefore use our Second Isaiah text also in relation to baptism, namely our baptisms. To be sure, the prophet originally directed these words to the Israelite exiles in Babylonian between 550 and 538 B.C., but they ...

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