by Patricia Templeton | Mar 5, 2025 | Sermons, Tricia's Sermons
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Those somber words are at the heart of our Ash Wednesday service, a sobering reminder of our mortality. No matter how rich or powerful or beloved we may be, our end is the same. We all return to dust. I’ve...
by Patricia Templeton | Mar 2, 2025 | Sermons, Tricia's Sermons
On the top of a mountain, Jesus kneels in prayer as his friends struggle to stay awake. As he prays, Jesus is suddenly filled with radiant light, his very face aglow. Then two figures from another time and place appear, Israel’s two greatest prophets Moses...
by Patricia Templeton | Feb 23, 2025 | Sermons, Tricia's Sermons
Have you ever picked up a book, opened it about three-fourths of the way through and started reading? You don’t know the characters, the plot, the context. Even if you can tell that something important is happening it doesn’t quite make sense. To...
by Patricia Templeton | Feb 16, 2025 | Sermons, Tricia's Sermons
Blessed are the poor, we hear Jesus say today. Blessed are the hungry, those who weep, and those who are hated because they follow him. In these beatitudes, or blessings, Jesus is naming those on the margins, the outskirts of society, and saying that in God’s...
by Patricia Templeton | Feb 2, 2025 | Sermons, Tricia's Sermons
We have competing events on the calendar today. On the secular calendar it is Groundhog Day. Sometime this morning a groundhog in Pennsylvania will come out of its hole and blink at the cameras surrounding it waiting to see if it sees its shadow, something to which...
by Patricia Templeton | Jan 19, 2025 | Sermons, Tricia's Sermons
Those of you who have been here for a while may remember that about 10 years ago I participated in a program put on by the National Park Service commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, and the ensuing successful voting rights march from Selma to...
by Patricia Templeton | Jan 12, 2025 | Sermons, Tricia's Sermons
It is one of my favorite images of Jesus, although I have never seen it visually depicted anywhere. There are dozens of portrayals of Jesus being baptized – paintings of him standing in the river with his cousin John, going under the water, coming out it, the...
by Patricia Templeton | Jan 5, 2025 | Sermons, Tricia's Sermons
There were signs telling them change was coming. First was a large, brilliant star, almost as bright as the sun as it streaked south across the night sky. Next came the birds, thousands of them, big and black, of a kind never before seen in the village, filling...
