Sermons

Pentecost is one of those events that has some aspects that are so striking that some of the other, perhaps even more, significant bit s are lost. Many people are familiar at some level with the story of Pentecost: the tongues of fire, the indoor wind storm, people hearing in their own language words spoken ...

This Sunday we have another opportunity to look at one of the very well known stories of the New Testament, the Ascension. This is when Jesus, post-resurrection, returned to the Father, to heaven, leaving this world behind. And, leaving his disciples behind. There are several things we can take from the Ascension or at least there ...

There is something so attractive about the “proverb” that titles this post. Just let it roll off your tongue for a moment, “no good deed goes unpunished.” Doesn’t it just feed into that sense of justice that we all have to such a wondrous degree when we are the target of injustice? You all know what ...

Today was an opportunity to stroll down memory lane. Our Lectionary texts had us in 1 Peter and the passage where we are called living stones, which was the name of a youth choir that I sang in a number of years ago. There is more detail in the sermon so give it a listen ...

Sheep and shepherd metaphors abound in the Bible. I’m not making any pronouncements but I have probably preached about anything that abounds in the Bible more than once and sheep and shepherds are certainly not an exception to this. So if I have preached about these before why not give in and preach about Mother’s ...

Almost all of us have had that moment where we were near a celebrity or someone famous (or infamous), perhaps an athlete, and were completely unaware of who they were. It is only later when someone tells us who the person was or we replay the interaction in our heads that we have that forehead-smacking ...

Doubt. Doubts. We all have them. We might doubt that our employer cares about our future. We might doubt that our friends actually like us. We might doubt that the government is honest and serves us. We can even have doubts about God. Do these doubts make us bad people? It is all too easy to ...

This is the beginning of Holy Week. In other times and other places this Sunday would be Palm Sunday, pure and simple. In this time and this place (and many others) this is Palm / Passion Sunday. Our schedules of work and other responsibilities have made a traditional Good Friday service virtually impossible for most ...

The Lectionary texts for this week all seem to revolve around death and resurrection, which makes them especially appropriate for Lent I suppose. As I reflected on them the more I came to see a theme of death as ending; not death as the end of life but rather death as a metaphor for the ...

The Lectionary texts for this week led me to deliver a sermon titled “Blind? Or just not seeing?” It seems almost beyond belief that anyone would choose to be physically blind but many of us choose willful blindness in what we think, believe, support or do. With these sermons I am trying to get us to ...