Sermons by Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall (Page 25)

Transformative Grace

Luke 18:9-14 In our Thursday discussion about the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, someone said something that I hear quite often around these parts. I agree with it and yet it also makes me uncomfortable. They said, “Being a Christian isn’t what you believe, it’s how you live.” “Being a Christian isn’t what you believe, it’s how you live.” Today’s parable helps me understand why it makes me uncomfortable. Most of the faults of the Pharisees came from over-striving…

Baptism

I was baptized one Sunday afternoon, surrounded by my family and godparents, when I was just four weeks old. Not because I was sickly, but because the Vicar wanted a baby to baptize on Mothering Sunday. In contrast, Constantine the Great, the 4th Century emperor embraced Christianity when he was 40 but didn’t get baptized until twenty five years later, when he knew he was dying. As a teenager, I decided that my baptism was null and void since only…

Praise God!

For five years starting when I was eleven, I went to an evangelical Bible class every Sunday afternoon. This gave me a wonderful grounding in the Scriptures, which I still draw upon today, but it also left me with some rather odd ideas. For instance, I was told that you could always tell a Christian because their mouth went up at the corners. This has caused me some problems because as you can plainly see, my mouth at rest turns…

Joyful, joyful

Last Sunday I went to hear Dolly Parton at the Santa Barbara Bowl. I was amazed and enthralled by her ability to hold thousands of people spell-bound as she talked about her family and her friends, sang old songs and new, and cracked jokes for hours… I want to be like her when I’m 70. What struck me most about Dolly was her joy. Her laugh seems to erupt irrepressibly out of her, as though she has a great store…

Cosmic Christ

Today we celebrate Cosmos Sunday. Usually when we think of Creation, we think of Planet Earth or maybe of this solar system. But in recent years we have seen astonishing images coming from telescopes like the Hubble space station. These images of distant solar systems, supernovas, quasars and the like have fueled huge advances in scientific understanding of the universe. No longer can we think of Creation as just this extraordinary blue-green planet with the huge problems we have brought…

One, holy and catholic

Today I am continuing with the series on the Nicene Creed, and we have reached, “We believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church.” There’s a certain irony in tackling this subject on Storm Sunday as the church has tended to be a stormy organization with a lot of dissension. Sometimes the church is described as a ship. In fact, the word “nave” for the body of a traditionally built church, came from the medieval Latin navis which means ship.…

Creation’s Suffering

Today is Fauna or Animal Sunday, but I’m not going to talk about polar bears or about cats or coyotes. Instead I want to talk about pain. Last week, several of you spoke to me about the pain of seeing the oceans heating up and the water rising; the pain of knowing about the plight of sea mammals hurt by our trash. This is painful stuff. And it is right for us to feel the pain and difficulty that human…

The Holy Spirit

This morning we continue our series on the Nicene Creed by considering the work of the Holy Spirit. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. The church fathers who created the Nicene Creed were very concerned about the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. At the time, you will…