This is an excerpt from the sermon preached at All Saints’ Orthodox Church on April 22:

In considering the Resurrection and the Christian moral life, perhaps we should begin by observing how frequently the New Testament uses the word “Therefore” in connection with Christian behavior. I will limit comments today to a single book, the First Epistle of the Apostle Peter.

This book, which is a sort of post-Baptismal catechesis, begins with the Resurrection of Jesus. Peter writes: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.”
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The following lines are excerpted from a sermon I delivered this past Bright Thursday in the chapel of Asbury Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky:

We may start by observing that two things happen in the Book of Psalms:

First, God is spoken about. This is already the case in the first two psalms, during the course of which He is never directly addressed. God is not invoked at all until Psalm 3. Indeed, many lines of the Psalter are statements about God and the things of God.

Second, in many places in the Psalter, God is spoken to. This dominating feature of prayer is what makes the Book of Psalms unique in the Bible’s Wisdom literature.
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