Sermons & Worship by Rev. Laurie DeMott (Page 20)

Galatians 2:11-21 If you have ever taken a creative writing course, led a youth group experience, joined a “Journaling” class, or been part of a life improvement seminar, you have probably participated in the classic exercise called, “Write your own obituary.”  In this exercise, participants are encouraged to think about the direction of their lives by describing in a fictional obituary how they would like to be remembered when they are gone.  When youth do this exercise, their fictional obituaries…

Galatians 1:11-24 Background on reading: I’m going to be preaching on Paul’s letter to the Galatians for the next three weeks so before I read today’s scripture, I want to give you a little background on Paul and on this letter specifically. The apostle Paul is considered by many to be the first theologian of the Christian church.   Paul was a Roman citizen and a Jew who was trained in the tradition of the Pharisees but he became a…

Acts 15:1-21 The Bible often describes faith as a walk. The Psalmist says to God, “I walk in faithfulness to you,” Isaiah implores us “to walk in the way of the Lord,” and Paul says that we should “walk by faith, not by sight.” Today following worship, we are going to hold our Annual meeting to launch a new year of ministry and in preparation for that meeting, I’d like us to think for a moment about walking with Christ…

Colossians 3:1-17 I’d like you to take a moment to consider the wonder of your brain. According to a website called “Brain facts”, your brain has “85 billion neurons completing upwards of five trillion chemical reactions each second at speeds of over 260 miles per hour.” Our brains are so complex that our own brains have problems conceiving our brains! Nevertheless, all of those neural connections are vital to our lives because they make sure we don’t forget to breathe;…

II Corinthians 4:7-11, 16-18 In the Eastern Orthodox church, the week following Easter is called Bright Week: the liturgies are all sung liturgies, the music is joyful in tone, and people spend the week outside of church in festive activity. On Easter, the men throw water on the women to remember the disciple’s accusation that the women were hysterical when they reported the resurrection, but on the Monday after, it is the women who get to throw water on the…

Matthew 28:11-20 That first Easter when God raised Jesus from the dead, the day did not dawn quietly. It began instead with a great shaking and shifting as everything everyone thought they knew about the world was suddenly wrenched from beneath their feet. The women were the first to feel it. They had come to the tomb early while it was still dark to mourn the death of their teacher and friend and to share their tears over the end…

Matthew 25:31-36 If you or your children have ever watched Sesame Street, you might remember a game called “One of These Things is Not Like the Others.”  Big Bird, for example, might have four bowls of bird seed on a table — one bowl is big and the other three are small — and he sings, “One of these things is not like the others, which one is different, do you know….?” I thought of this song as I was…

Matthew 25:31-36 A minister once quipped, “We start every one of our church services with an organ recital: we list the hearts, livers, colons, lungs, and various body parts of our congregation that are in need of prayer.” Today I am going to talk about the fourth “category” in Matthew 25’s litany of concerns, care of the sick.  As we have thought about Matthew 25 during the weeks of Lent, I have noted that not all churches pay attention to…

Matthew 25:31-36 Last summer, a post began circulating on Facebook entitled, “An Experiment for People Who Don’t Understand Depression.”  The post was shared over 20,000 times by the end of the year, passed along by people who were struggling to explain their own depression to family and friends.  One woman, for example, said, “[I know depression is different for everyone but] this is exactly how it feels for me.” The author of the post, John Anson, wrote this: “A lot…

Matthew 25:31-35 The following is the spoken portion of a Powerpoint presentation on refugee needs. [Slide — intro] These days, our nation is so polarized that it is hard to find anything we all agree on.  We are divided across political and religious lines over issues of race, gender, sexuality, gay marriage, women’s rights, and abortion.  It is heartening to discover, then, that there is still one truly ecumenical concern that is shared by people of faith across all denominations…