Sermons & Worship (Page 49)

Mark 1:12-13 Martin Luther, the famous Protestant Reformer lived in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, now central Germany. If you were to toodle around that region today, you might stumble upon a sandstone rock nearly 1000 feet tall and on the top of that massive hill, you could see the remains of the famous Regenstein Castle. The castle, built in the Middle Ages, is a popular tourist destination where the townspeople hold an annual tournament of knights, but the modern…

Mark 1:1-11 “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” These words are the words we usually hear during Advent along with sermons telling us that we must prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ into our world. Every December, we preachers trot out the admonition, “Christmas is coming — make your hearts right to prepare a place for the baby Jesus.” If you actually read the Bible, however, (something we preachers sometimes forget to do!), you will…

John 1:1-18 It is a tradition upon the arrival of January 1st to make resolutions concerning desires for improvement in the coming year. And it is nearly as dependable a tradition for columnists, commentators, and preachers to pontificate upon the tradition of making resolutions. I would feel somehow remiss then if I didn’t weigh in on the resolution-making custom in this first sermon of 2016. I don’t know how the practice of making resolutions on January 1st began, nor do…

Luke 2:21-35 This past week, Stacy came home from her semester abroad in Spain and she helped me to decorate our Christmas tree.  Actually, her help entailed sitting in the recliner keeping Cody entertained so that he wouldn’t take the ornaments off of the tree as fast as I put them on but it was an important job nonetheless, and we had enjoyable and relaxing hour.  We invited Mathew to join us but he declined our invitation saying that he…

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…