Sermons Archive

John’s Gospel begins with the beautiful ode “In the beginning was The Word,” setting up a Gospel-long metaphor of God’s Realm as light, and the Realm of those opposing God as darkness.  In the second chapter of John, Jesus turns water into wine at Canaas he celebrates the beginning of his ministry, and then Jesus cleanses the temple.  John...

The feast of Pentecost is one of the three high holy days of ancient Israel.  During the feast that occurred right after Jesus had been crucified, many Jews had gathered in Jerusalem, including 120 Jews who were devoted followers of a Jewish prophet named Jesus of Nazareth.  On this feast day, these Jesus-followers experienced something that...

Today we will contemplate the Judas Problem.  What happens when we are betrayed by one of our own?  How do we respond?  What do we say?  And how do we move on?  Our passages today have some extraordinary things to say about how Peter and the early church responded to Judas Iscariot, and by extension, how we are...

Mother’s day provides an interesting challenge for preachers. Do we speak directly about the holiday?  It  does have some theological implications, the motherhood of God, the nurture of families, the importance of the feminine in our society today, and the ethical need to support women in their choices?  Or, do we go to the lectionary, our...

First, my heartfelt thanks for the especially warm welcome you extended to me last Sunday. Everyone has been so kind and friendly and it has helped me to begin to feel at home among you already. I thank all who spiffed up my office, and who prepared the reception, and all those whose efforts I don’t even know about.  I am touched, and feel...

Our two texts today bring the familiar image of Jesus as the shepherd  into focus, but our passage from John’s First Epistle introduces another element that is more challenging:  Do we think about “other” sheep (both those already in the fold and those not yet in the flock) in the same way that God does?  On this Sunday when we welcome Pastor...

On this, our celebration of Earth Day, we raise the words of the prophet Jeremiah and the Gospel of Luke to begin to understand the complex relationship between heaven and earth.  Our central Christian Prayer opens our thinking about earth and heaven this way: Our Heavenly Father, your name is sacred above all others.  May your Kingdom come to...

Our oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark stop with this startling and abrupt verse, “The women fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  Some later manuscripts add a shorter ending, and even later manuscripts add verses 9 through 19.  But our oldest descriptions of...

Our message from the Gospel of John follows chapter 11’s declaration that from the day when Jesus raised Lazarus, the chief priests and the Pharisees planned to put Jesus to death.  Jesus was now under a death sentence, and he knew it because the next verse says that he no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went into wilderness.  But,...