Sermons
Saved for Life
Sunday morning has a language all its own, full of words that we seldom, if ever, use other times of the week. Words like repentance, righteousness, grace, incarnation. Words that I suspect we would be hard pressed to easily define. Sometimes the strange...
Wrestling Faithfully with God’s Words
Every year during Lent we begin our service with a version of the Ten Commandments, either the full reading of them as we did today, or a condensed version of what Jesus calls the two greatest commandments – to love God and to love your neighbor. The...
For David Abner
Today's service is a little bit different from what we would normally do on the Second Sunday in Lent. As you know, this week our parishioner David Abner died after a stay in hospice. David's children preferred not to have a formal funeral for their father, but will...
Divine Disarmament
The story of the rainbow is a curious reading for the first Sunday in Lent. We are at the beginning of the most somber season of the church year, a time set aside for reflection and repentance, for fasting and self-denial. We began the service today with the Great...
A Lenten Prayer
Today is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, those weeks between Christmas and the beginning of Lent. Epiphany ends every year with the reading we heard today, the story of the Transfiguration – the ultimate mountaintop experience where Jesus meets...
Have You Not Known?
Today's reading from the prophet Isaiah finds the people of Israel in deep despair, wondering if they've been abandoned by God. The land that God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the land that God led them to after freeing them from slavery in Egypt; the land...
A Loose-Leafed Faith
When I was in college someone gave me a button that I probably still have in a drawer somewhere. “Question Authority” it boldly proclaims. “Question authority” was a philosophy that suited a journalism student well. In fact, I spent my college years, and many years...
The God Who Can’t Be Trusted
Our Old Testament reading opens today with the prophet Jonah on a beach in the Mediterranean. This is no beach vacation. Jonah looks stunned and confused. You would, too, if you had just spent three days in the belly of a giant fish, then were spewed out onto...
Love’s Redemptive Power
Have you ever wondered how the Bible came into being? Who wrote the many different books that we consider scripture, and who decided what to include in the official Bible and what to leave out? There is no clear-cut answer to those questions. With a few exceptions,...
Christmas in the Ruins
It is good to be gathered here with you on this beautiful night, the night that we celebrate the birth of a baby who will change the world. Everything about this evening is special – the music that our choirs have practiced for so many hours; the beautiful flowers and...
IYKYK
Mary knew. Those are the words on a sign of a church I pass coming here every day. I imagine that some might wonder what these two words actually mean. If I texted that question to one of my younger friends, they might respond IYKYK. Or for those of us who still...
The Party Pooper
It happens every year at this time. The Christmas decorations are going up, the smell of fresh greenery is in the air, the red velvet bows are still crisp, the melodies of Christmas carols follow us everywhere we go – except in church, of course. There is a festive...
Beginning at the End
Happy New Year! Today is the first day of Advent, the beginning of a new year in the church calendar. We have spent the last six months in what the church calls “ordinary time,” that long period between Pentecost, which is 50 days after Easter, and the First...
Just Another Pagoda
Today is the last Sunday in the season of Pentecost, the longest season of the church year. At one time the church referred to the season of Pentecost as “ordinary” time. From May through the end of November there are no big festivals or celebrations on the...
Light in the Darkness
I was about 10 years old when psychic Jean Dixon predicted the exact date of the end of the world. Somehow in those days before the internet and social media the news of this impending doom raced through our fifth grade classroom, both exciting and...