Sermons
Shepherds all!
I don’t often use sermon titles as blog post titles but I am this week because I can’t think of any clever variation on it and I like it. I have added the addition of an exclamation point however so I guess that might be considered a variation I suppose. This Sunday we looked at several of the many, many passages of scripture that deal with sheep and shepherds. As…
Peace
“Peace be with you” was the functional equivalent in Jesus’ time of “Hello” or perhaps “How are you doing?” so it hardly seems worth spending any time talking about his use of it in today’s Gospel lesson (Luke 24:36b-48) . . . so why did I? Not only did I mention it in both sermons, the title was “Peace be with you” and it is virtually all I talked about….
The best day of the year!
Today is the best day of the year. It is better than my birthday, than my anniversary, than any other day . . . today is Easter Sunday. I’m quite used to getting sideways looks from people, especially children when I say this and point out that the chocolate is not what makes it the best. Today is the best day of the year because this is the day when…
An interesting combination of days
This Sunday is called Palm / Passion Sunday. It is a response to the undeniable fact that most people do not find it convenient, and sometimes not even possible, to observe Holy Week; frequently not even Good Friday. So the good people who work out the Liturgical calendar and the Lectionary took what had been Palm Sunday and added the Monday to Saturday portions of Holy Week to it in…
Well if we have to
It is Lent and so far we haven’t really talked about dying. Not that I think that is all that Lent is about nor do I particularly enjoy talking about dying but “if we have to . . .” Our Gospel lesson this Sunday is John 12:20-33 which contains this verse “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just…
Let’s talk about grace
Grace is one of those things that I can talk about for a long time. I came into a preliminary understanding of grace much later than some people might have supposed. It wasn’t until after I finished my undergrad degree in theology, of all things, that I began to gain a visceral understanding rather than a simple (and even simplistic) academic understanding. I knew, at some level, that grace was…
The scandal of the cross
The title of this blog post only shows up in one of the sermons (I think) and is drawn from the 1 Corinthians reading for this Sunday, 1 Cor 1:18-25. There is something so fundamentally wrong with the cross if we don’t understand it for what it was; the way, the only way, to God. Paul writes that the cross is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1…
Promises, promises, promises
This Sunday we were looking at the promises God made to Abraham and how they might possibly connect with us, after all, none of us is interested in being the parent of many nations, at least I don’t think anyone reading this is. So what’s the connection with us? What possible connection could we have with Genesis 17:4 recording God saying to Abraham (still Abram at that point) “As for…
Revisiting a very familiar phrase
There are many familiar phrases I might be thinking about with this blog post title but the one I’m thinking about today is “once for all.” “Once for all.” What does that even mean? The context for this usage is 1 Peter 3:18 where Peter writes, “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God” (NRSV). I know…
A new perspective on a very familiar story
The story of the Transfiguration is very familiar to almost every one in a Christian church. The bare bones are that Jesus went up on a mountain with three of his disciples and while he was there Moses and Elijah came and visited Jesus and God the Father said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” A dramatic story but one that we don’t necessarily spend a lot…