Sermons & Worship by Rev. Laurie DeMott (Page 22)

Matthew 1:1-6; Ruth 1:16-17 Introduction to Scripture: The gospel of Matthew opens with the genealogy of Jesus in order to establish that Jesus will be born of the house of the great King David. Jesus will be the son of David, the King of Kings. In order to show this line of descent, the gospel lists 42 generations of fathers and sons. Now obviously if there were 42 fathers and sons, there must have been 42 mothers as well but…

Matthew 1:1-5; Joshua 2 Introduction to scripture: For those who were not here last week, let me begin once again by explaining the title of my Advent series, “Bring on the Grandmothers.” Before the gospel of Matthew tells us the story of Jesus’ birth, it first provides Jesus’ genealogy in order to establish that Jesus will be born of the house of David. Matthew lists 42 generations of fathers and sons beginning with the father of the Jewish faith, Abraham,…

Matthew 1:1-3; Genesis 38:1-26 Introduction to scripture: The gospel of Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, starting 42 generations back with Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith, and traveling down from father to son to arrive at Joseph, because it is Joseph, and not Mary, who is descended from the house of David.  To be descended from the house of David gave a Jew living in first century Palestine street cred; kind of like someone today who can…

Proverbs 13:7; Matthew 6:19-26 We are living in complex times. Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at census forms over the years and in 1920, the US census form asked if you were male or female, had a tiny box to list your color, and asked for your place of birth and “mother tongue.” The 2010 census listed 17 check box options for race alone, and even allowed people to check more than one box. For the 2020…

Matthew 10:16 We have just come out of an exhausting and divisive campaign and the post election climate continues to be one of anger, blame, fear, and hurt. Although I believe firmly in the separation of church and state, I believe just as firmly that that doesn’t mean faith has nothing to say to the current situation. What is faith if not a means for us to come to terms with our humanity, to understand our role in society, to…

Psalm 25:1-5 I am here to tell you this morning that all good things in life take time.  Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say “all” — there are indeed spontaneous events that bring us great joy and there are even wonderful ideas that can come to fruition with hasty last minute efforts — so I wouldn’t want to carve it as a rule in stone but I do believe that in general, good things in life take time. Have you ever…

Genesis 8:1-5, 13-22 Introduction to scripture: In the year 2000, George Barna conducted a poll which asked people, “If you could ask God only one question and you knew God would give you an answer, what would you ask?”  The most common response was, “Why is there pain and suffering in the world?”1 This was also a question that one of you posed in my “Ask the Pastor” series, and so in this final sermon of the series, I am…

II Samuel 21 Introduction: In my series on “Ask the Pastor,” I received a request that said, “I’d like to hear more about the women of the Bible.”  In most of the stories that you learned in Sunday School, the leading characters were men and women appeared only in the supporting roles of wives and daughters.  This is partly because the Bible was written for and by a patriarchal society and of course, was passed down through the generations by…

Judges 11:1-6; 30-39 [Intro to scripture] I’ve been preaching a series called “Ask the Pastor,” based on questions that people raised last spring and as I’ve said before, some of these questions are really difficult ones and I know that it’s impossible to answer them in one sermon which is going to be the case for today’s question. The best I can hope to do is open some avenues for thinking about them. Today’s question is one that many Christians…

John 14:1-10 In his book, Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain said that he once spent an hour teaching a cat and a dog to be friends after which he put them in a cage together. They got along quite well so he taught them to be friends with a rabbit which he then also added to the cage with good results. Over the course of the next two days, he continued to introduce new animals to the cage until…