Sermons
So it’s Lent!
Today is the first Sunday in Lent. What does that make you think of? What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “Lent”? Is it glum people giving up chocolate or beer or TV? Is it the character Klinger on the show MASH giving up atheism for Lent? Is it complete bafflement that anyone would give up stuff just because? I’m not here to tell you…
Transfiguration for everyone
The blog title is just a hair flippant, which shouldn’t surprise anyone really, but it is trying to get across part of what I was preaching about today. Today is Transfiguration Sunday in the church year and it all revolves around the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on a mountain. He was there with Peter, James and John and suddenly he was transfigured, transformed, into a dazzling figure with…
Not just a Beatles song
This Sunday we talked about love and how could “All you need is love” not go through my head? Well it couldn’t, it even infiltrated the sermon title, “Love is all we need.” So was this just a mushy sermon about how if we all love each other everything will be fine? Not exactly. The text we used is one of the most well known texts in the New Testament,…
One body
So why do you think Paul uses “body” as a metaphor for the church? There are several reasons I’m sure but I suspect one of the biggest ones is that “body” is something that is common to all of us. In today’s Epistle lesson, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31, Paul makes good use of the notion of the church as body of Christ to help all of us remember that there are…
What kind of a question is, “Whose gifts?” anyway?
If you have been following me for any length of time in this blog or in any of the churches I have preached in then you know two things about me.* First, I like sermon titles that are questions and second, I like to talk about spiritual gifts; this Sunday we got both! There is something about asking and answering a question that often, for me at least, stimulates some…
Jesus’ baptism considered
We are “required” to consider Jesus’ baptism every year. The first Sunday after Epiphany is called the Baptism of our Lord Sunday, so it is more or less inescapable; but why? Why is this in the church calendar and given its own Sunday? Why do we we need to revisit something like this every year? I have addressed the benefits of repetition more than once so I won’t bring the…
It’s a new year!
It is the first Sunday in the new calendar year and it seemed like a good idea to take a look at beginning things. This time of the year is when we, and by “we” I mean lots of people if not necessarily me, make resolutions; we begin something new. For some it is all about health, for others personal development, the list is limited only by our collective creativity…
Hey! It fits!
There is something almost universal in the experience of getting a gift, Christmas or otherwise, that doesn’t fit. Sometimes the lack of fit is physical, such as when the giver forgets that you are no longer 12 but are actually 15 and quite a lot larger than you were. Sometimes the problem of fit is wrapped up (see what I did there) in what you do or do not like,…
Love
The fourth Sunday in Advent is the Sunday of Love. There is so much to say about love that is can be a challenge to know what to say this year but as I have found with other “large” topic Sundays, if I am patient and willing to listen to the Holy Spirit everything seems to work out in the end. What struck me this year was the aspect of…
Do we want joy or happiness?
This Sunday’s sermons about joy and happiness and what the difference, if any, is between them. I made the point, which I would be happy to have anyone challenge me on, that happiness is dependent on external circumstances and joy is internal and independent of external circumstances. I also did my best to draw a link between the first and third Sundays of Advent, namely Hope and Joy, which I…