“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” This is the first, and will most likely be the only, time that I have quoted Joseph Stalin in a sermon. We are fast approaching a...
Utter nonsense. Foolishness. An idle tale. Every year we begin our Easter celebrations with shouts of joy: “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” we cry. “The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia!” As we make this joyful proclamation, we may think we are echoing the words with which...
It didn’t have to end this way. A question that perhaps every Christian has asked at some point is this: Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Or perhaps more to the point: What kind of God would allow, even demand, the torture and death of his own son? Writer Mary...
Today begins the most sacred week of the Christian year, the week that we walk with Jesus on the path that ends with resurrection, but first goes through betrayal, arrest, torture, and death. Holy Week, as it is called, begins...
The cross is looming large before us on the horizon. We are deeply into Lent. At the end of our service next Sunday we will find ourselves at the foot of the cross, watching as Jesus’ hands and feet are nailed into the wood, cringing as he is...
“There was a man who had two sons.” Thus begins what is probably the best known of all of Jesus’ stories, usually known as the parable of the prodigal son. This tale of the son who takes his inheritance, squanders it, then...
It starts out as just an ordinary day. Moses is doing what he always does, leading his father-in-law’s flock to food and water. Tending someone else’s herd isn’t much of a job – in fact it is work usually given to women and children. But Moses...
The promise was outrageous from the beginning. Abraham is an old man, 75 years old. His wife Sarah is 65. They have no children, and at their age, no hope of having any. They are nomadic people with no land to call their own....
