Sermons Archive

It is traditional on the Sunday after Easter to read the gospel of John, the well-known "doubting Thomas” story that we have just heard. Even though all the other readings are on a three-year cycle, this reading always comes up right after Easter. It is as if, the church in her wisdom says, we know that Christians believe in the resurrection,...

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

On Good Friday, we remembered Jesus’ death.  Death usually has a period after it.  Death.  Period.  But on this Easter morning, we celebrate that Jesus’ tomb was empty.  Jesus’ claimed victory over death.  Jesus’ death had a comma after it, not a...

What is your passion? What is  one thing that you love to do, that you would do anyway if no one was paying or looking ?  The thing that you do with zest and joy and focus ? For each of us the answer is necessarily different, although people do share passions. Sports for example, or antique collecting or video games. There  are whole...

Several years ago, Bill’s brothers and sisters held an all out extravagant 70^th birthday party for their mom, Jeanie.  If you knew Jeanie, you would know that usually she would not stand still while a fuss was made over her—she was a good Mid-western humble woman—always ready to give and very uncomfortable receiving.  But ever since...

Our Lenten journey focuses on reflecting how we may have fallen away from God, then repenting, and asking God to take us back in forgiveness.  Today, we consider the other side of the coin.  What does it mean to grant forgiveness to others when they ask us to forgive them?  Granting forgiveness...

Have you ever been really thirsty?  I mean so thirsty that you hurt and hallucinated?   In survival training as a navy pilot, I was confined to a small cell and given nothing to drink for a long, long time.  I became so thirsty that nothing other than getting a drink really mattered.  All I could imagine was a drink of water.  Then they placed...

In our passage today from Luke, Jesus evokes a very old form of ritual prayer, a prayer of lamentation.  A lament is an expression of sorrow, a psalm or prayer of deep grief.  So Jesus in our passage laments over Jerusalem, expressing deep grief and sorrow that the city of Jerusalem has rejected, and still rejects, the prophets of Israel.  We...

When Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness in our passage from Luke today, we probably each have an image in our mind about what this scene looked like.  Perhaps, the devil, in a red suit with a tail and horns, drags Jesus from place to place luring him with food and power and control.   That is how the devil tempts us, right?  Actually,...

Today, both of our lectionary passages continue from where we ended last week.  However, this week, the passages enter into new territory.  Our First Corinthian passage turns from Paul talking about all of us being parts of Christ’s body to Paul’s famous Ode to Love.  And our Luke passage continues the story of Jesus’ inaugural speech delivered...

Our lectionary passages today bring together two well known Biblical stories and metaphors.  From First Corinthians, we have Paul’s metaphor of all of us being body parts of the church and the church being the body of Christ, and from Luke, we have Jesus’ inaugural speech and declaration of his mission statement in his home synagogue.  So on...