Sermon Archive

Text: John 20:19-29 I have always felt that Thomas has never really gotten a fair shake. For years we have used him as an example of how we should not doubt, but how we should simply believe stuff at face value, without asking questions. In Sunday school I was always one who asked all kinds of questions, much to the chagrin of my church school teachers. Not so much that they felt that I shouldn’t ask questions, but it was the kind of thing that if it wasn’t in the lesson plan, they’d be out of their depth. Sometimes the story of Thomas was brought up, because Thomas was put in such a bad light that nobody wanted to be a “doubting Thomas.” Unfortunately, that branding has really kept us from learning anything from the story other than “Shut up and believe what we tell you.” We’ve gotten to the point that we have come to believe doubt is a sin. To put it simply, it seems as though there is no room for doubt within the church. And sadly, I have heard it said that if you are a person of...

Text: Matthew 28:1-10 I remember once as a student sending a ladies group at a church into shock. I was doing my internship, and they asked me to come to talk to them about the history of Christmas. I certainly agreed, prepared some notes and handouts and away I went. I began the presentation by sharing with them that the church survived for the first few hundred years of its existence without actually celebrating anything on December 25th. The gasps were audible… I then became a bit worried that I might be burnt at the stake. I went on to explain that it’s entirely true… the earliest historical evidence of Christmas being celebrated in Rome was in 354 AD. It never became widespread until even a few decades after that… all at a time when Christianity was not only legal, but had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. By contrast, we know that Easter has been celebrated since day one. The precise method for determining when Easter falls took a bit of time to develop, but East...

Text: John 18:28-19:42 I remember once when I was a student, I was out for my field placement day at the church that I was assigned to during Holy Week. My mentor, the minister that served there, was normally quiet and reserved. He had a great deal of quiet wisdom and integrity, and even in retirement has a great deal of respect from the church at large. During Holy Week he seemed particularly fidgety, and came across as being rather nervous. When I asked him about it, he expressed that he was a bit antsy about preaching on Good Friday. “How do you preach on the most significant event in human history?” he asked as he paced back in forth in front of his bookshelf. I took his question to be rhetorical, because as a student it would be awfully presumptuous of me to hand this well respected veteran of the pulpit a simple answer. It also struck me that his nervous energy was directed not at Easter Sunday, when the largest crowd would be present in the church, but at Good Friday when the a...

Text: Matthew 21:1-11 ; 26:14-27:66 Palm/Passion Sunday Note: This reflection was part of a larger service that included a dramatic presentation based on the entire passion narrative from Matthew, using the Contemporary English Version of the Bible. During the service for this Sunday, I only read the first paragraph of the following reflection. The rest of the dramatic presentation made the rest of it redundant. The story of Christ’s Passion from start to finish is never a “convenient” read with what we have come to expect from Sunday morning worship. Usually if a passage gets over ten verses long, we begin to fidget, wondering when the next part of the service is coming up. This is the third year that we’ve taken this approach. In the same way that we tell the Christmas story through Lessons and Carols at that time of year, telling the entirety of Christ’s Passion, from his entry into Jerusalem to when they finally lay him in the tomb. At it’s best, Holy Week is supposed to be a recou...

Healthy Spirituality Part 5: Taking Action Text: Ezekiel: 37:1-14 Since the beginning of Lent, I’ve gone out on a limb that I’ve admittedly never done before. Doing a series of sermons that build on each other, rather than “one-offs” based on the lectionary text for the day. Since Lent is a season where we reflect on our relationship with God, it seemed appropriate to use the stories to reflect on different aspects of Healthy Spirituality. It’s certainly not a comprehensive coverage to be sure… people have written massive books on the subject… but the themes were reflecting points: taking responsibility for our relationship with God, trusting that God is there with us, taking opportunities to learn more about our faith, (something about) prayer, and finally this week, how all of that comes together into putting our faith in action. My reflection this week goes beyond the usual suspects that we tend to think of when we say faith in action. This is more than mission work. Our actions are...

Text: Psalm 23 It seems to be a natural fit. In speaking about healthy Spirituality, prayer is almost always the one subject that comes up. Of course it does. Prayer is that one moment where we pause and talk to God. It also seemed to be a very fitting piece into the overall puzzle because of the readings that we have today. The 23rd Psalm, is arguably the most famous Biblical passage. I would guess that it is one of the few passage of scripture that most people of a certain generation and old would have memorized. Why? Because it was part of how we were raised. The 23rd Psalm is a very pastoral image… calm, serene, prayerful language. At only six verses long, it is easily committed to memory. Because it reaches back into the childhood of so many, even those who have in recent years never darkened the door of a church know it… It’s for good reason that the 23rd Psalm is the most-often read passage of scripture at funerals. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The book of Psalms are a co...