Sermons
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…
Who should we be?
I don’t often open this sort of thing with a quotation but for this week, I am. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. Ralph Waldo Emerson* The reason for putting that quotation in is that today’s sermons are about who we should be when we relate to other people. As I mention in at least one of the sermons,…
Some things are hard
I know that the title of this blog post is one that could be taken several ways. I hasten to add that this is not a “tell-all” post where I relate things that are going on in my life that are hard (I’m not promising that I won’t write such a post in the future, this just isn’t one). This Sunday’s sermons are about us dealing with some of the…
God calling . . . for reals
I know I should probably apologize for this post’s title but I just couldn’t resist it, and as I obviously did it on purpose, an apology would be at best disingenuous . . . so I won’t. But besides pulling the nose of language purists* everywhere what could be going on here? This week’s sermons are my attempt to help us take seriously the notion that God still calls people…
Baptism
So this Sunday is the Baptism of the Lord Sunday in the liturgical / lectionary year. This can be a problematic Sunday because it forces us to address one of those odd things in the Bible, namely, Jesus’ baptism. This is odd for at least a couple of reasons, first of all, we have John the Baptist to deal with and he was one odd duck all by himself. Second,…