Sermons & Worship (Page 47)

Psalm 25:1-5 I am here to tell you this morning that all good things in life take time.  Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say “all” — there are indeed spontaneous events that bring us great joy and there are even wonderful ideas that can come to fruition with hasty last minute efforts — so I wouldn’t want to carve it as a rule in stone but I do believe that in general, good things in life take time. Have you ever…

Genesis 8:1-5, 13-22 Introduction to scripture: In the year 2000, George Barna conducted a poll which asked people, “If you could ask God only one question and you knew God would give you an answer, what would you ask?”  The most common response was, “Why is there pain and suffering in the world?”1 This was also a question that one of you posed in my “Ask the Pastor” series, and so in this final sermon of the series, I am…

II Samuel 21 Introduction: In my series on “Ask the Pastor,” I received a request that said, “I’d like to hear more about the women of the Bible.”  In most of the stories that you learned in Sunday School, the leading characters were men and women appeared only in the supporting roles of wives and daughters.  This is partly because the Bible was written for and by a patriarchal society and of course, was passed down through the generations by…

Judges 11:1-6; 30-39 [Intro to scripture] I’ve been preaching a series called “Ask the Pastor,” based on questions that people raised last spring and as I’ve said before, some of these questions are really difficult ones and I know that it’s impossible to answer them in one sermon which is going to be the case for today’s question. The best I can hope to do is open some avenues for thinking about them. Today’s question is one that many Christians…

John 14:1-10 In his book, Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain said that he once spent an hour teaching a cat and a dog to be friends after which he put them in a cage together. They got along quite well so he taught them to be friends with a rabbit which he then also added to the cage with good results. Over the course of the next two days, he continued to introduce new animals to the cage until…

Genesis 9:12-17; Ecclesiastes 3:19-22 I saw a cartoon recently in which a man stands at the Pearly Gates greeted by Saint Peter and by a small very excited dog. St. Peter says to the man, “So you’re little Stevie! [Your dog] has been going on and on about you for the last 60 years.” Those of us who are dog lovers like to imagine ourselves in that scene, greeted at the gates of heaven not only by our loved ones…

Matthew 22:15-22 In the gospels, the Pharisees are usually the bad guys. Every hero needs an arch enemy to battle and so the gospel writers give Jesus the Pharisees. It is important to remember that in real life not all the Pharisees were as bad as the gospels sometimes portray them. Many of them were decent people trying to live as the prophet Micah instructed, “doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God,” and so when we read about…

Psalm 119:33-48, Romans 15:4 Picture yourself for a moment walking along a rocky shore with a child about six years old.  Maybe you spent a day this summer in such a fashion exploring tide pools with your child, or grandchild, or niece or nephew, so imagine a day like that one — a warm relaxing day with a young child investigating the world of nature.  There you are, surf crashing in your ears, examining starfish and peering at barnacles encrusted…

Luke 11:3-4 As I write this, I am breathing in the delightful scent of bread baking in the oven, a smell that returns me to my childhood.  Every Saturday morning my mother would bake enough bread to feed our family of seven throughout the coming week.  She would mix up a huge bucket of dough, let it rise, kneed it and pound it on the kitchen table, shape it into half a dozen loaves, and finally bake them filling the…

Luke 11:1-2 Two friends were having coffee and the discussion turned to the subject of religion.  After listening to his companion extol his knowledge of all things spiritual, the first man challenged the second, saying, “If you are so religious, let’s hear you quote the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, I bet you $10.00 you can’t say the Lord’s Prayer.” The second responded, “Sure I can: Now I lay my down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.…