Sermons & Worship (Page 39)

II Esdras (or IV Ezra) 8:20-36; Romans 6:1-2 In our responsive reading today, the author of II Esdras says, “For in truth there is no one among those who have been born who has not acted wickedly, and among those who have existed there is no one who has not transgressed.  For in this, O Lord, your righteousness and goodness will be declared, when you are merciful to those who have no store of good works.” How is your store…

Romans 1:1-7, 16-17 When Hurricane Michael swept into Lumberton, North Carolina only a few weeks after Hurricane Florence had left its trail of devastation through the town, how many Christians must have asked themselves, “How can we believe that God is faithful?” And when a powerful tsunami hit Palu, Indonesia right on the heels of an earthquake, leaving at least 1,700 people dead and many more unaccounted for, Christians in that city came to worship last Sunday asking, “Is God…

Exodus 20:1-2, 8-11 The province of Nova Scotia, a province of fishing towns, lobster boats, and fog shrouded shores, is technically a peninsula, joined to the mainland of Canada by a narrow strip of land on its northwest corner.  The rest of the province, however, is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and for most people, it is most easily accessed by ferry.  The CAT ferry leaves Portland, Maine once a day and sails almost directly eastward for five hours, quickly leaving the…

Exodus 13:17-18a, 21, 14:5-9, 15-16, 19-29 “I am the Lord your God who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of of the house of bondage…”   When God meets Moses on the top of Mount Sinai to deliver the Ten Commandments and forge a covenant with this ragged group of weary former slaves, God begins with these words that establish God’s character: “I am the Lord your God who has brought you out of the land of…

Habakkuk 2:20 On Friday night, I spent a half an hour tucked under my basement stairwell doing absolutely nothing. The emergency alert on my phone had gone off, warning that a tornado had been seen in the vicinity and telling me to seek shelter immediately. “Do not wait until you see or hear a tornado,” it added ominously.  “Seek shelter now.” So I did. I headed toward my basement and urged my two dogs to follow.  Dexter came easily and without argument…

Matthew 20:1-16 In 1848, a thirteen year old boy from Scotland came to the town of Allegheny, Pennsylvania and went to work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill for $1.20 a week.  He had no formal education but he was willing to work hard and always sought opportunities to learn new skills.  Consequently, at fourteen he became a messenger in a telegraph office, then official telegrapher to the Pennsylvania railroad, and eventually rose to be a railroad superintendent…

Genesis 4:1-16 As I have mentioned before, I maintain a database of all of the sermons I have ever preached and sometimes when I’m preaching on a certain theme or scripture, I’ll search through that database to see what I’ve said about that topic before.  Usually I conclude that I didn’t say anything helpful at all (!) but every now and then I come across a sermon that even I enjoy re-reading and that is what happened to me last week.  Last…

James 3:13-18 I was recently scrolling through the web looking for a reference when, as so often happens, an article about something entirely different caught my eye.  I don’t now remember what my original search was about because I abandoned it and instead read the article which was titled, “Can Envy Be Good for You?” 1   Envy, of course, is one of vices that we learn as Christians is among the seven deadly sins so I was intrigued to see what arguments a…

Luke 17:1-4 This past week, the news was once again full of reports about sexual abuse, about powerful men using their positions to force unwanted intimacy upon others, but this time the perpetrators of the abuse were not politicians or rich Hollywood producers; they were priests, and the people protecting them were bishops and archbishops, leaders in the church who claim to have given their lives to serving Christ.  The stories of the abuse perpetrated by these priests were horrific, disturbing,…

Colossians 1:11-17 Have you ever heard the phrase, “organizing principle?”  The phrase is quite popular with pundits, so much so that when I googled the phrase this week, my search turned up 3,480,000 web pages containing the phrase.  Obviously, I didn’t read all of those references but even a quick look at the top hits revealed a wide diversity of uses for the phrase.  A scientific paper, for example, opened with the statement, “Evolution is the organizing principle of modern biology.”  An SAT site…