Sermons

Philosophy. It is one of those words we can find ourselves running away from leaving it to pedants and specialists. Of course, we can do this if we want but I’m not sure we need to. If we look at philosophy as a description of how we live our lives or wish to live our lives, ...

Psychology has taught us all sorts of interesting things and one of the ones at the top of my mind at the moment is the concept of “priming.” This is the reason after you buy a new/different car you seem to see the same make and model “everywhere” when you never saw them before. It ...

There are many stories in the Bible that church-going folks know well. There are a few that everyone either knows or has heard something about. The story of the Good Samaritan is one of those stories. By the way, the “everyone” in the statement above really means, “those in a Western or Western-influenced context.” The bare ...

Most of us have things we say often. My kids have heard me say some variation of “Nothing of value comes without work” or “Nothing that matters is easy” probably more times than they want. The idea isn’t a bad one, it is true, most things we want take some work to get. No one ...

Of course, we aren’t really trees. If nothing else we all move around too much. (If you are thinking of reminding me about Ents, go right ahead.) I decided to use the metaphor of a tree because if there is one thing a tree does, without thinking about it, it is growing. The trees we aren’t ...

No one wants to be forgotten. For that matter, no one wants to forget someone else. I know there are exceptions to this and every rule, but for the most part, I think this is true. The “not being forgotten” part is pretty self-evident. The evidence for not wanting to forget other people is the ...

There are a few Sundays repeated every liturgical year. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and Transfiguration, to name a few. Today is another one, namely, Trinity Sunday. I mention, somewhat jokingly, in at least one of the sermons that if there wasn’t a Trinity Sunday no one would preach on it. Why? The simple answer? the Trinity is hard ...

The Day of Pentecost is two things. First, it is the birth of the Christian church. Admittedly, the church that began then was considerably different than the church we see now but they are connected in an unbroken chain. Second, it was a new manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It was a new manifestation, ...

I have never met a person who hates gifts. I have met a lot of people who don’t always like all the stuff around gift giving–the expectations, disappointments, forced gratitude–but the idea of “gift” is okay. We often don’t know what to do with gifts and that’s even more likely when we don’t see a gift ...

Virtually every human being wants to be part of a group. There are people who prefer solitude above everything else, but they are very much in the minority. We want to know we are “in.” There is not much wrong with the desire to be included but we cannot lose sight of the reality for ...