Sermons & Worship (Page 39)

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…

Isaiah 40:28-31; Galatians 6:9-10 One of the first psalms I memorized as a child, Psalm 100, proclaimed that we should, “Serve the Lord with gladness!” and Isaiah echoes this sentiment, promising that the faithful will not faint or grow tired but will be borne aloft on eagle’s wings. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, my burden light,” and Paul proclaims with a mighty trumpet charge, “Let us not grow weary while doing good!” We hear these scriptures and others like…

Psalm 46:1-7 In the land of Patagonia — a land east of the Andes mountains stretching down to the southernmost tip of South America and washed on its eastern coast by the waves of the South Atlantic — in the land of Patagonia, there are no trees because the desert plateaus are swept constantly by a harsh wind.  The wind carves the rock.  It creates express-lanes in the skies for soaring hawks and seabirds.  The scrub brush that clings to…

I Thessalonians 4:13-18; Luke 17:20–21 Do you remember what you were doing last September 23rd?  If it helps, it was a Saturday — the fourth Saturday in September.  Did you sleep in?  Were you working, traveling, cleaning the house?  How were you feeling that day, do you remember?  No?  How about October 21, 2011?  Any memories of that day?  It was the third Friday of the month, ten days before Halloween.  Do you remember that day or how you felt about getting up that morning?  Or what about April 29, 2007?  That…

Romans 14:7-9 For years I have been putting quotes in the bulletin based on the theme of the service and when I first began that practice, I collected quotes from my reading or looked up topics in Bartlett’s Quotations but now I get my quotes from the internet, most often from Goodreads, a site in which readers post their favorite quotes from authors they enjoy.  Though this ensures that my pool of authors is larger and more diverse than in my…

Romans 12:14-21 One Sunday, a pastor was preaching on Jesus’ command to love our enemies and he began by saying to his congregation, “I’ll bet that all of us struggle with this command and you may think you are alone but you are not.  Raise your hand if you feel you have any enemies.”  Quite a few of the people raised their hands.  “Raise your hand even if you have only a few enemies,” he continued and several more put their…

I Corinthians 9:19-23 The story of Pentecost that we heard read this morning in a babble of different languages is found in the book of Acts, written by Luke as a sequel to his gospel. The full title of the Book of Acts in our Bible is “The book of the Acts of the Apostles” but many scholars have noted that the title is a bit misleading. A more accurate title would be something like: “The Book of the Acts…

Philippians 1: 1-11 Paul began every letter with a reminder of grace and he spoke about grace a lot in the body of those letters. “For all of you share in God’s grace with me,” he tells the Philippians, “whether in prison and as we work on behalf of the gospel.” I think Paul talked so much about grace because he knew that we fight grace.  We have problems believing it, practicing it towards others, and accepting it on our…

I Corinthians 6:9-20;   The Message translation (attached at end) One of my first years in ministry, I was asked to give the sermon at the high school Baccalaureate.  Back in those days, all of the churches still gathered every June to honor the graduating seniors in a joint worship service but even then, the Baccalaureate tradition was struggling to stay alive:  high schoolers were increasingly diverse in their faith backgrounds and decreasingly interested in observing the traditions of their parents.  Preaching the Baccalaureate sermon to…