Sermons & Worship (Page 44)

Colossians 3:1-17 I’d like you to take a moment to consider the wonder of your brain. According to a website called “Brain facts”, your brain has “85 billion neurons completing upwards of five trillion chemical reactions each second at speeds of over 260 miles per hour.” Our brains are so complex that our own brains have problems conceiving our brains! Nevertheless, all of those neural connections are vital to our lives because they make sure we don’t forget to breathe;…

II Corinthians 4:7-11, 16-18 In the Eastern Orthodox church, the week following Easter is called Bright Week: the liturgies are all sung liturgies, the music is joyful in tone, and people spend the week outside of church in festive activity. On Easter, the men throw water on the women to remember the disciple’s accusation that the women were hysterical when they reported the resurrection, but on the Monday after, it is the women who get to throw water on the…

Matthew 28:11-20 That first Easter when God raised Jesus from the dead, the day did not dawn quietly. It began instead with a great shaking and shifting as everything everyone thought they knew about the world was suddenly wrenched from beneath their feet. The women were the first to feel it. They had come to the tomb early while it was still dark to mourn the death of their teacher and friend and to share their tears over the end…

Matthew 25:31-36 If you or your children have ever watched Sesame Street, you might remember a game called “One of These Things is Not Like the Others.”  Big Bird, for example, might have four bowls of bird seed on a table — one bowl is big and the other three are small — and he sings, “One of these things is not like the others, which one is different, do you know….?” I thought of this song as I was…

Matthew 25:31-36 A minister once quipped, “We start every one of our church services with an organ recital: we list the hearts, livers, colons, lungs, and various body parts of our congregation that are in need of prayer.” Today I am going to talk about the fourth “category” in Matthew 25’s litany of concerns, care of the sick.  As we have thought about Matthew 25 during the weeks of Lent, I have noted that not all churches pay attention to…

Matthew 25:31-36 Last summer, a post began circulating on Facebook entitled, “An Experiment for People Who Don’t Understand Depression.”  The post was shared over 20,000 times by the end of the year, passed along by people who were struggling to explain their own depression to family and friends.  One woman, for example, said, “[I know depression is different for everyone but] this is exactly how it feels for me.” The author of the post, John Anson, wrote this: “A lot…

Matthew 25:31-35 The following is the spoken portion of a Powerpoint presentation on refugee needs. [Slide — intro] These days, our nation is so polarized that it is hard to find anything we all agree on.  We are divided across political and religious lines over issues of race, gender, sexuality, gay marriage, women’s rights, and abortion.  It is heartening to discover, then, that there is still one truly ecumenical concern that is shared by people of faith across all denominations…

Matthew 25:31-35 During the weeks of Lent, I am preaching on the social issues raised in the 25th chapter of Matthew and today I want to address Jesus’ call to feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty, which for the sake of simplicity, I am going to group together under issues of poverty.  It is no surprise, for example, to discover that Flint, Michigan which has been coping with a polluted water supply is also one of the…

Matthew 25:31-46 In the passage which I just read from the gospel of Matthew, Jesus describes the day of judgment in which the sheep are sorted from the goats with the sheep — those who were compassionate and cared about the vulnerable in society — earning salvation while the goats — those who ignored the needs of their neighbor — are condemned.  This passage may raise many questions for readers but apparently the most burning question on some people’s minds…

Matthew 13:1-9 One summer many years ago, I was on a service project in Kentucky helping youth repair some homes in an impoverished area.  Kentucky is known as the Bluegrass State because of a species of meadow grass that flourishes throughout the region in Kentucky’s humid sub-tropical climate.  Bluegrass needs well-drained fertile soil to grow and I can still remember my first encounter with Kentucky’s soil the morning I was charged with digging a hole for a new post to…