Sermons & Worship (Page 49)

John 1:1-9; Luke 1:39-45; Matthew 3:1-12 We’ve all heard the saying, “Patience is a virtue,” but I would argue that sometimes it is impatience that is the virtuous expression of our faith.And so this is a sermon for the impatient among you — the restless, the impulsive, the agitated and the excitable, the fervent, the zealous, the ever busy and bustling, the fidgety and demanding and headstrong and determined, the ones who have been told all of your life, “Will…

Mathew 2:1-18 I have been decorating my house for Christmas and this week, I will be putting out my creches. Part of the creche tradition in my household is the journey of the wisemen. I place the wisemen from one of the creches on the landing of our second floor stairway where they wait patiently until December 11th. On that day, they begin their descent down the stairs, one step every day, until finally, on Christmas Eve they join the…

Luke 1:46-55 As we begin this season of Advent, our country is embroiled in an ugly debate about whether to welcome Syrian refugees to our shores.  We are grieving once again from the victims of a mass shooting after a gunman took the lives of three people (and wounded nine others) at a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado.  On Friday, demonstrators in Chicago disrupted shopping in the wake of a police video that showed a white police officer fatally shooting a…

Psalm 46 For the past six weeks, I have led an adult study on Methods of Biblical Interpretation, and when I began my study, I told the class that each week on the following Sunday, I would preach a sermon using the approach we had discussed in class.  Accordingly, unbeknownst to all of you except for the members of that Bible study, for the past five sermons I have used different methods of interpreting the scripture.  One week in October,…

Galatians 3:27-29 One of the traditions in my family and in many families around holiday time is working on a puzzle.  We get out a Thanksgiving themed puzzle or a puzzle of St. Nick, and spread out the pieces on a cardboard table so that everyone can work on it when the conversation slows.  And what’s the first thing you do when you start a puzzle?  You sort the pieces.  I like to find all of the edge pieces and…

Luke 4:16-30 I received my training for ministry at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School which has a long tradition of equipping ministers for work in social justice and so as part of our curriculum, we read the works of Walter Rauschenbusch, the founder of the Social Gospel, learned of the ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr., and read James Cone, an early advocate of Black Liberation Theology.  As pastors-in-training, we were steeped in the literature and thinking of radical reformers…

Mark 8:22-26 The 19th century biologist Ernst Haekel once proposed that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”  In regular English, what he meant was that while you were in your mother’s womb, for a while you looked like an amoeba, then a sea squirt, then a fish, and so on until you finally got looking more or less human.  Haekel’s theory was a little simplistic but he was right that as an embryo you once had slits on your neck that looked very…

 Luke 10:25-37 Jesus told a lot of parables but perhaps more than any other, the parable of the Good Samaritan lies at the core of how we think about ourselves as Christians.  We are the ones who are supposed to stop when there is someone who needs some help.  Being a Christian, especially for us who are members of this church, means more than just saying, “I believe in Jesus in my heart;” it also means showing that faith with…

Luke 9:21-27 The disciples had just entered the big time.  For months they had been following Jesus around Galilee, listening to his stories, and watching him work, and finally Jesus decides that they are ready to try it on their own.  He sends the twelve disciples into the country on their first assignment and they go through the villages preaching the good news and healing diseases.  When they return, Luke says, “They tell Jesus everything they have done.” We can just imagine…

II Corinthians 5:16-21Luke 18:9-14 Do you suppose the Pharisee standing in the Temple praying noticed that he was so swelled with pride that he was in danger of bursting?  He certainly noticed the abject state of the man with whom he shared that Temple sanctuary but I’m guessing that he was blind to his own arrogance. Of course, the Pharisee is just a character in a story so we really can’t attribute thoughts to him at all.  To ask what…