Sermons on Church's Year (Page 7)
The Bigger Picture
I don’t usually watch television, but every morning I check the headlines on the BBC News app. This morning the first one is “Row over Trump team email trove.” If I were the BBC I might have led with the deadly attack on a Methodist church in Pakistan or the mudslide that has buried a remote village in Chile. Life is hard, and now we have learned our connectedness with others across the planet, we know more than ever about…
All Saints Day
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I sometimes wonder what it means to be proud. Am I proud of who I am? Is that okay? And why? Did I have anything to do with it? What have I done to take pride in? Upon pondering these things I find myself thinking that I’m proud to be a child of God, but I can’t take credit for that. I can say I’m proud…
This land belongs to…
This land is your land, this land is our land; this land was made for you and me. When Woodie Guthry wrote this iconic song in 1944 it had a different slant. There were two verses that don’t appear in this version. In one, Guthrie challenges private property ; There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me; Sign was painted, it said private property; But on the back side it didn’t say nothing; This land was…
The Dance of Trinity
Today’s Scriptures all point to the Trinity, even though the word itself isn’t in the Bible. Genesis 1:1-2:4 Six centuries before Jesus was born, an unknown poet-priest imagined God at the beginning of time: hovering over the void, creating life out of chaos. Sun, moon, and stars are born; the earth is formed, with its mountains and seas; plants spring up, animals begin to roam the earth, and human beings are created. When we read this particular verse (Genesis 1:26),…
Habits of the Heart
Happy Birthday! Today is Pentecost, the birthday of the church. This is the point when God’s mission of creation and redemption began to be manifest in the church. Of course it wasn’t an organization or an institution at that point, it was just a group, but an identifiable group, of Jesus’ disciples. They were all together in one place when the Spirit came upon them. And soon they weren’t locked in a room anymore – they were out in the…
Living as if Easter is Real
When I was a growing up we didn’t have Easter egg hunts. People in Britain give each other large hollow foil-covered chocolate eggs, often filled with candy. I think I was eight the Easter I had chicken-pox and I got a bumper crop of Easter eggs. I never had so many before or since. Yesterday I happened to be briefly at an Easter Egg Hunt. There was a separate section for the little ones, where eggs lay totally unconcealed and…
Nothing Changes Except Everything
Nothing changed. God had broken into our world with sound and beauty. Light and hope pierced the dark of gloom and nothing changed. The prophets of old had spoken of it; “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” The people who sat in darkness waited and hoped and prayed and longed for Light to dawn. But…