Sermons & Worship (Page 36)

I Peter 2:1-5 Like most occupations, the ministry has collegial associations which meet on a periodic basis supposedly to give clergy an opportunity to share ideas and provide support to one another. My first encounter with such a group came when I was a nervous new minister of the tender age of 26 and I was invited to attend the monthly meeting of the Allegany-Cattaraugus American Baptist clergy, or as they called themselves, the Alley-Cats. The presiding minister of the…

John 12:8 Easter is typically about bunnies and chicks and little cuddly lambs like we saw in Children’s Time because as I told the kids these baby animals represent new life and the possibility of a new beginning but in this sermon, I want to put aside those typical Easter animals and hear a message for us in an animal you will not find in your Easter basket, unless you were foolish enough to leave that basket unguarded, because that…

Romans 5:1-5 According to the apostle Paul, one of the characteristics of the Christian life is hope. Even when every indicator would lead the average person to hunker down in despair, Paul says, the Christian will remain a person of hope, and “and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” ‘Hope does not disappoint,’ Paul claims. Try telling that to the crowds who…

Luke 14:25-30    One of the most popular game shows in the history of T.V. is the show, “Who wants to be a millionaire?”    Apparently from the ratings it has received, the answer to the question “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” is, “A whole lot of people.”  The show first aired in 1999 and has run continuously since, occasionally changing networks or hosts and adding new rules to keep the format fresh, but it has remained at heart a…

James 1:22-27 An Arabian proverb says, “All sunny days make the Sahara desert.”  The Arab who coined the proverb was not really foretelling the problems of climate change but was using the common knowledge that we all hold about the natural world to comment on the human condition. Just as the world needs some gloomy days of rain in order to nourish the roots of its plants, so too, the proverb’s author said, the human spirit requires occasional tribulations in order…

Ephesians 2:4-22 My grandmother, who lived to be 93 years old, was one of five children — the only sister to four brothers — and at the end of her life if you had asked her how many siblings she had, she would have replied, “I have four brothers.” Notice the present tense: have. My grandmother outlived all of her siblings, starting with her twin brother who died in infancy leaving his sister to grow up without him, and yet…

Isaiah 61:1-3, 10-11; Mark 8:27-30 [Intro to scripture]  During the weeks of Lent, I will be preaching a series on “Essential Questions,” looking at things such as “What Matters most?” “What about Suffering?” “Is There Hope?”  In the interest of full disclosure, I want to acknowledge that I have borrowed the series idea from a minister named Martin Thielin 1 but while I credit him for the inspiration, all blame for the actual sermons I produce in this series should fall on me because…

Matthew 5:1-12 One summer while I was vacationing at my family’s cottage, our lawn tractor broke down, and when the truck from the repair shop arrived to pick it up, I greeted the driver and we chatted for a few minutes as he loaded the tractor into his pickup.  Suddenly he said to me, “I see you’re a Christian.”   I quickly reviewed our conversation in my mind trying to figure out what I had said about tractor repair that…

Matthew 21:28-32 I come to you today as the Reverend Laurie DeMott, a graduate of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, and the pastor of this church since 1983, but if it weren’t for a decision I made in the fall of 1975, for one thing that I knowingly and deliberately chose to leave undone, I might be living an entirely different life. I have thought about that day in 1975 and that thing left undone for over forty years now, not…

Leviticus 19:19; Matthew 13:31-32 Did you ever have an argument with your teenager and wished there was something in the Bible to help you? Perhaps you should have turned to chapter 19 of Leviticus and read this scripture to your rebellious child: God says, “You shall revere your mother and father.” If they scowled at your advice, you could have followed your reading with Leviticus 19:32, “You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old.” And if they…