Sermons

It is a new year, really. Not a new calendar but a new Liturgical year, a new church year. Even though the church uses the same calendar you use for lots of things, the church year is different from the calendar. It begins with the First Sunday of Advent, which this year is November 29 ...

Christ the King Sunday is the last Sunday in the liturgical year. It doesn’t lead, at least not always, to the kind of introspection December 31st can. This year it led me to think about what it means to serve a monarch. If we are thinking in terms of a “traditional” monarch, an historical king like ...

Even people who hate being told what to do, who hate being constrained, tend to like a schedule. They might not want anyone to schedule them but they probably want to know when other people are available or around. It shouldn’t surprise us that we want to know what is coming up. When we think ...

Today was Remembrance Sunday. Not every church or denomination observes Remembrance Sunday, usually the Sunday before November 11, and I have no quarrel with choosing not to when it is a well thought out position. I am glad to be part of a denomination and two congregations who think it is important. The only “special” addition ...

Today is Reformation Sunday. This is a bigger thing for Presbyterians and Lutherans than for some other, perfectly fine, denominations. I like Reformation Sunday because in an alternate universe I am an historian and in this universe historical things interest me. I am grateful for an understanding of the context in which I find ...

What does it mean to be in God’s presence? For Moses, in the Old Testament it might be lethal. Our Old Testament lesson this week comes from Exodus, to be exact it is Exodus 33:12-23. It is the story of Moses asking God to show Moses God’s glory. God say, “Okay, but if you actually look ...

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday so it seemed a natural thing to reflect on being thankful. I found myself led past the usual people and things for which I’m thankful as I reflected on our Old Testament lesson in comparison to the Philippians reading. We find it easy, or at least I do, to be a bit ...

Confidence is an interesting thing. We need to have confidence in ourselves and in our institutions. Governments, especially minority governments, need to have the confidence of the house. When people lose confidence in banks, bad things happen and “confidence men ” might trick us out of our money. So is confidence good or bad? Well, it ...

This Sunday is Presbyterians Sharing Sunday and it is a Sunday set aside to remember we are part of something larger than our individual Presbyterian congregations. If you are reading this and are not a Presbyterian but a member/adherent/attender in another denomination I am sure everything will be perfectly familiar to you, if under a ...

I know, I know . . . I even say it in the sermon, we really aren’t “allowed” to be annoyed or irritated by stories in the Bible. But c’mon, the story about the landowner with the vineyard and his HR practices can be really annoying. There is something in Jesus’ story in Matthew 20 ...