Sermons & Worship (Page 44)

Psalm 150 This past week, I had the most ordinary day:  I had to go to the grocery store so I drove to Hornell and everyone on the roads drove a reasonable speed and not once did I think to myself, “What a dangerous driver!”  When I reached the grocery store, a man entering before me held the door and waited for me to go through first.  The store was a bit crowded but everyone moved politely out of each…

Psalm 30 One of the iconic figures of American history, Daniel Boone, was a frontiersman who in the late 1700s helped settle parts of the wilderness that we now know today as Kentucky and Tennessee. Boone wandered over huge swaths of forest land in the Appalachian Mountain range and he blazed a path through the Cumberland Gap that allowed more than 200,000 pioneers to follow after him and settle the town of Boonesborough, one of the first white settlements west…

Psalm 46 I am preaching a 4 week series on the psalms of which this is week two. The Psalms have had a central place in both Jewish and Christian worship for thousands of years and Jesus himself undoubtedly recited the same psalms in his synagogue as we recite today. The psalms were originally written in Hebrew but after Alexander the Great hellenized the ancient world in the 300s BC, many Jews used a Greek translation of the scriptures and…

Psalm 13 In small churches across America, congregations constantly ask, “How can we get more young people to come to church?”  They look at their graying members and worry that they are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the next generation and so they discuss how they can make their worship life more palatable to youth, how they can preach a gospel message that will resonate with people just starting out in their adult lives. I recently heard, however, a member of…

Galatians 5:22-26 Have you ever had anyone tell you that they needed to “find their voice?”  If so, the person was probably not referring to a case of laryngitis but rather to a kind of inner exploration.  This phrase, “finding your voice,” has been adopted in the self-help literature to define the process of exploring one’s desires, talents, and passions in order to create a life that is fulfilling and singular, unique to you.  Steven Covey, author of The Seven…

Galatians 2:11-21 If you have ever taken a creative writing course, led a youth group experience, joined a “Journaling” class, or been part of a life improvement seminar, you have probably participated in the classic exercise called, “Write your own obituary.”  In this exercise, participants are encouraged to think about the direction of their lives by describing in a fictional obituary how they would like to be remembered when they are gone.  When youth do this exercise, their fictional obituaries…

Galatians 1:11-24 Background on reading: I’m going to be preaching on Paul’s letter to the Galatians for the next three weeks so before I read today’s scripture, I want to give you a little background on Paul and on this letter specifically. The apostle Paul is considered by many to be the first theologian of the Christian church.   Paul was a Roman citizen and a Jew who was trained in the tradition of the Pharisees but he became a…

Acts 15:1-21 The Bible often describes faith as a walk. The Psalmist says to God, “I walk in faithfulness to you,” Isaiah implores us “to walk in the way of the Lord,” and Paul says that we should “walk by faith, not by sight.” Today following worship, we are going to hold our Annual meeting to launch a new year of ministry and in preparation for that meeting, I’d like us to think for a moment about walking with Christ…

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…