The question is, how do we, as modern-day followers of Jesus, reach out to the alienated in our own communities? We begin by filtering our interactions through the lens of kindness. Today’s scripture describes God’s nature as “kind” – especially to those who turn their backs on God’s invitation to be kind. What we put into the world is part of the ongoing creation of the world.
Participating in the kingdom Jesus proclaims is of such importance that we should get rid of anything that keeps us from it. Hands, feet, eyes, whatever inclinations or habits or actions that may keep us from participation in the new community Jesus forms must be put away. All will struggle, Jesus promises, but not all will endure.
For others, though, a great team isn’t necessarily a team that’s going to win, but a great team is a team that all your friends are on. In this case, if you’re a captain, when you start deciding who you’re going to choose to welcome onto your team, you only pick those kids who are going to help you achieve your goal of greatness.
Browse all of the Sermons and Messages
A hunter wanted to show off his new dog, so he invited a friend to the lake to see what his dog could do. The owner took a decoy duck and threw it out as far as he could. His dog ran across the top of the water all the way out to the decoy and carried it back. After three times, his friend seemed unimpressed.
I'm sure most of you have heard of an oxymoron. It's a Greek word that means "pointedly foolish." You make an oxymoron when you put two words together that are complete opposites. They contradict each other. Some of my favorite oxymorons are "clearly confused," "act naturally," "open secret," and "jumbo shrimp."
Thomas Wheeler was at one time the CEO of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. He and his wife were driving down an interstate highway when he realized he hadn’t paid close enough attention and needed gas.
One of my family stories involves a little girl born of a young woman who fell in love with a soldier before the end of World War 2. The young woman, without the knowledge or approval of her family ran away with the man and planned to marry him as soon as possible. Before that could happen, her aunts somehow located her and took her back home. When her pregnancy was discovered, she was promptly deposited in a home for unwed mothers in a different city.
This is Trinity Sunday, the last in a series of Sundays of the Liturgical Year (beginning with Advent and continuing to today) that lay out our salvation history in the life, death, resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
There are at least a couple of books entitled The Road; the first one I began reading because I read it was is a classic and among the top reads of the century, so I thought it would be a good choice. I decided about halfway through that just because a book is called a classic doesn’t mean I have to like it or finish reading it, so I stopped and picked up a second book with the same title.
Our daughter ran in high school. Her two main events were the 800 meter run and the 3200 relay. Over the years I watched a lot of relay teams passing off a lot of batons, and as you might expect, there is an art in doing that well. Both the one who hands off the baton and the one who receives it needs to be confident in what they’re doing and in what their teammate is going to do, in order that the race can continue as seamlessly as possible. The outcome of the race depends upon their ability to make a good exchange.
I check out one of the news outlets daily summaries each morning so I have an idea of what’s happening in the world. It’s too easy for me to get caught up in what’s happening here and now in my own space, and doing that helps me to look out a little further into the larger space of what’s happening in the world.
Perhaps you and I take for granted the opportunity to learn in this day and age. In this nation we consider it our “right” to receive a basic education so we can make choices that will help us be successful in our lives.
It is officially the fourth Sunday of Easter on our liturgical calendar, sometimes called Good Shepherd Sunday, and the texts are filled with shepherds and sheep. The imagery of God as the Good Shepherd isn’t unique to Psalm 23, God is often described as a shepherd who leads, protects, comforts and nurtures God’s people.
Hearing that announcement can fill you with a sense of peace and comfort knowing that you have a group of people who love you and are ready to stand by you through thick and thin, or it can cause you to shutter as you wonder: Oh, my! Will I be like that someday?!
Poor Thomas. All these years later, he’s still most known for his weakest moment. It’s sad. Still, we can’t honestly think bad of him, can we? He’s us in a whole lot of ways: that little voice inside us that resists easy answers to hard questions about faith, who might like a little proof, even though we realize that proof and faith don’t always work very well together in the same sentence.
It’s a familiar story that we read from out of one of the Gospels each year. We hear it from different perspectives; different details that don’t exactly fit together like pieces of a puzzle—and yet somehow they all tell us the mysterious story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Palm Sunday 2021. It is a day of mixed emotions, isn’t it? I am so pleased to be able to come together face-to-face in a sanctuary this a.m. Last Palm Sunday we were in our 3rd week of online services only, and none of us had any idea at that point that our best option for the next year would be to gather online only.
There are times when it feels like you’re “large and in charge” and things are going your way—just the way you always hoped they would be. You’re calling the shots, setting the schedule, making the decisions. And then something happens and the rug is pulled out from under your feet. It all changes in a heartbeat.
Wrapped within this morning’s scripture is one of the most familiar passages to contemporary Christians—and perhaps to non-Christians, as well. The actual words of John 3:16 may not be known to the viewer who sees the two-toned-face-painted football fan standing in the bleachers at the endzone, holding his John 3:16 sign, but there you’ll see it, just the same.
Perhaps because of the setting in which I’ve worked for 30 some years, I have on many occasions, enjoyed taking the opportunity to go and sit in the sanctuary of the churches I’ve served during the week, when no one was around, to simply breath in the peace of that space.
In Blessed Bookies this week, we discussed a book that touched on a number of themes, including a dying man’s reflection on whether or not he had made the right choices in his life, and had lived in the best way he could have. He wondered if his life had had meaning and purpose.
I’m not a detail person. Never have been. I tend to be able to see the big picture and then have to spend more time detailing out the various steps to get there. Scott isn’t a detail person, either, and that has worked for us, somehow. But we gave birth to a child who—even as a little girl—would see little things and ask us about them, and we’d look at her, and go—what?
There’s the temptation to just stay there… Maybe it’s a particular place where you’ve visited…where the weather is fair, where they don’t “do” snow-shovels, where you can hear seagulls and waves crashing. You could get used to that.
The national economic shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced most of the world to hit “Pause” on our work and our social activities and our plans for the future. Businesses shut down overnight. Churches closed their doors. Weddings and funerals and graduations were postponed, or significantly altered.
At the crossroads of faith we come today to discuss the question of immortality. Yet to explain the unexplainable and to describe the indescribable and to peek through the shadows of earth and catch a glimpse of eternity is often more than our grieving minds can grasp and our questioning intellects can assimilate.
In this third week of our series, God is Holding Your Life, I want us to hear/to experience the confidence proclaimed in Psalm 139 that God is with us from the time of our creation to the time when the grave is made our bed—and every moment in between.
Do you lift your eyes up and turn to God when something happens in your life that you’re not sure how to deal with? Do you see God when you look out into the world and see beauty? A pink sunrise or an orange sunset introducing the new day or night? When you see the sun shine on frost-covered trees?
