Sermons & Worship (Page 42)

Luke 3:23-38 No matter how old we get, no matter how far from childhood we’ve come, family always seems to be with us.  And I don’t mean it in a physical sense like they’re always dropping in with a car full of luggage to disrupt your routine and eat you out of house and home but what can you do about it because, after all, they are family?  I’m talking about the way they take up residence in your psyche,…

Luke 3 and 6 Today is a 3 for the price of 1 Day! Instead of getting just one measly sermon for your money this morning, you will also get a little bible study and a church history lesson complete with visual aids. And by the time you walk out of here, you will know a little more about the doctrine of the Trinity, the meaning of the incarnation, and why anyone should care. Obviously we have a lot of…

Luke 2:21-35 A young man once climbed to the top of the bell tower of the local Episcopal church hoping to impress his girlfriend with his courage but to his embarrassment, he got stuck up there and couldn’t get down. Seeing the rector passing by below, he called out, “Father, save me! Save me! The priest looked up and said, “Young man, we are Episcopalian. We don’t use that kind of language here!” Although all Christian groups recognize the word…

December 31, 2017 NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS  “From the desert monastics” by Daniel B. Clendenin Daniel Clendenin is a professor of theology who earned his Ph.D. from Drew University, taught at William Tyndale College in Michigan, and then at Moscow State University for four years.  Though raised an evangelical, his time in Russia led him to in-depth explorations of Christianity’s orthodox traditions.  He spent several years reading the fourth century writings of monastic hermits who fled the growing corruption of church at…

Philippians 2:1-5 At Christmas time, we tell stories of shepherds and angels, of stars and magi, and of stables and cattle a-lowing, and every year, news magazines run articles that evaluate the historicity of the nativity story. Astronomers discuss whether the star of Bethlehem might have been a supernova or a particular alignment of planets that sent the magi scurrying to Judea to check out the prophetic implications. Theologians debate whether the virgin birth was real or a Christianized version…

Isaiah 61:1-4; Luke 1:46-55, Luke 4:16-21 I have a number of creches in my house which I will be carefully unpacking this week to display on my window sills and high shelves.  Most, like the one that I have been showing at Children’s Time, are ceramic and a few are made of delicately carved wood, so because they are fragile, I have to put them up where I won’t accidentally knock them over.  At the end of the season, I…

Joel 2:15-17, 21-27; Luke 1: 26-28 Dorothy Delay was a violin teacher who taught many famous violinists, including Itzhak Perlman, and she was celebrated for her ability to look at her students, evaluate their personalities, and know how best to help them grow musically.  She didn’t follow a prescribed method but adapted her instruction to the unique qualities of each student:  she encouraged the shy students, challenged the arrogant ones, drilled those weak in technique, and refined the ear of…

I Samuel 8:4-22 As many of you know, the only sport I follow is baseball (unless you count Four Square with the youth,) and over the years, I have collected a number of books about baseball. Here, for example, I have a book called Baseball: An Illustrated History. It is the companion book to Ken Burns documentary on the history of baseball since its first recorded games in the 1840’s when it was played by young prosperous gentlemen of the New…

Joshua 1:1-9 In November of 2016, hours after the Chicago Cubs broke a 108 year old curse to win the World Series, the cemeteries of Chicago sprouted Cubs’ hats and flags draped across the tombstones of loved ones. Sharon Sokas said that she had put a Cubs’ flag on her husband Michael’s grave because she watched the entire series with her husband constantly in her mind. “He would have been ecstatic,” Sokas said as she stood at her husband’s grave.…

Excerpts from Exodus 28 Wow, as I listen to the long descriptions of the priestly garments that God orders Aaron to wear, I can’t help but think, “I’m glad I am a Protestant minister and not an Israelite priest. Those robes must have been sweltering in the desert heat, not to mention the sheer weight of all of those stones on the shoulders of the ephod and jewels on the breastplate.” The elaborate descriptions of the priest’s vestments may baffle…