Sermons
Answering the question
We are all human beings which most of the time is pretty wonderful. There are some aspects of our humanity that can get us into trouble if we don’t pay attention to them. One of these things is our desire for answers. Human beings hate uncertainty. Very few of us are happy with things being “up in the air.” We want answers and we want them now; if the answer…
Prayer and talking
This post’s title is what I was getting at with the sermon title but fuzzier so the actual title was “Prayer and speech”; let me know which you think is better. We are finished with James for this church year and we finished up with a discussion about and around prayer. The last half of the last chapter of James has some of the most familiar and misused words in…
No end to wisdom
We are revisiting wisdom again this Sunday. Our Lectionary readings include more from Proverbs, plus Psalm 1 but we are going to look at James. James is a book I thought I was familiar with, and I suppose in all honest I was, but I am finding out some new and really good stuff every week we are there. This week was especially good because it forced me to look…
Not all proverbs are true
That’s a little provocative, as blog posts go when you tend to talk about the Bible. Which proverb am I talking about? The Old Testament reading for this Sunday is Proverbs 1:20-33, am I singling one of those out? As a matter of fact, I am not. Proverbs are found all over the place, not just in the Bible. We frequently think they are true, when we understand them. “A…
Considering alternatives and finding none
We often want options, some of us always want options. When we get news we don’t want or are in a situation we dislike we want an option. This is only natural and all too human. But what do we do when we don’t have an option, an alternative? For that matter, what do I do? I wish I had a heroic story or two about my rising to an…
Let’s talk wisdom
Wisdom is one of those tricky words. It is frequently conflated with cleverness or even pragmatism and it really isn’t related to either of those. We are talking about wisdom today because our Old Testament lesson, about Solomon, and our Epistle lesson, Paul telling to live wise rather than unwise lives, are very much thematically linked. At least the theme that arose for me out of our texts for this…
Beyond another list
We like to tell ourselves we don’t like rules but really, most of us do. We like rules because they make for a predictable world and who doesn’t want that? I don’t know anyone who is looking for anarchy on the roads for example. No one wants traffic lights to mean whatever anyone wants them to mean. Red meaning stop is a comforting thing to every driver. The possibility that…
Just turn around already
I am sure most of you reading this are fully aware that “repentance” is based on the notion of turning around. This Sunday we are looking at the life of King David again and at a particular point where he was given the opportunity to turn around. All of us are given various opportunities to turn around, from the trivial to the most important. Taking a wrong turn on your…
Let’s talk about another myth
This week we are talking about another myth; a very dangerous myth. The myth of “autonomy” has been a destructive idea for many, many people. The definition of autonomy we are using in these sermons is “the sense of not being accountable to anyone.” The text that got me thinking about this is our Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, 2 Samuel 11:1-15. This generally sordid story of adultery and…
Change happened
Many of us don’t like change. I’m one of them. Change, in my mind mind, equates to chaos and general upset, neither of which I like. But whether or not we like change, we have changed. We have gotten older, our weight and hair quantity may have changed along the way, our opinions about all sorts of things . . . all of these have or will change. This isn’t…