Whenever I invite people over, I check the house—at least the public parts. Is everything relatively neat and clean? Laundry hanging anywhere? Kitchen counters cleared? Magazines and books straightened? If people show up unexpectedly, they get what they get, and it might not be pretty. I could even be embarrassed that things aren’t as perfect…
Isaiah’s words from today’s first reading always get to me in a different way each time we read them. The writer of the passage says “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them” (Is 42:9). You’ll have to give me…
You won’t find a sermon for today, because it’s actually our Christmas Eve service. And you won’t find a sermon for January 8, because it’s actually my report for our annual meeting. But we’ll be back soon with regular sermons!
Listen to what happened to me tonight… you’re never going to believe it, but I swear I’m not making it up. We were out in the fields outside of Bethlehem, just watching the flocks like always. We had to stay awake, or at least take turns staying awake, to make sure that the sheep stayed…
We are almost there… we are almost to Bethlehem… and you have been so very patient! For three Sundays now you have heard the pain and the hope, the judgment and the deliverance of Advent… those themes we hear in anticipation of the Messiah. This is the final Sunday before we celebrate the miracle of…
How many of you have joined the Marie Kondo phenomenon and started cleaning out your clutter while asking the simple question, “Does this spark joy?”? Some say that Marie Kondo has brought joy back into the consciousness of the culture in a big way. Marie says that if your items don’t bring joy into your…
There’s a key phrase in this week’s Gospel reading that I wonder if we all kind of skip over, hoping to get right to the meat of the story: “in the wilderness.” It’s relayed by Matthew not just once, but a second time, echoing the words from the prophet Isaiah. John – the Baptizer…
How many of you have seen the movie Sister Act? For some reason, this reading from Romans always reminds me of the scene where the sisters give Sister Mary Clarence, played by Whoopi Goldberg, an alarm clock because she is having trouble getting out of bed on time. The alarm clock, which is the shape…
Today’s Gospel text may seem out of sequence to us. After all, here we are on the last Sunday of the Christian year (Advent is the beginning of a new church year and it begins next Sunday.), and we are reading texts that remind us of Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter. And where does…
Today’s words of warning in the Gospel of Luke follow the account of the widow who displayed true devotion to God’s temple by giving two small coins. This devotion, if it had been replicated by those in the leadership of the temple, would have protected it from the disaster that was to come. In fact,…
Today’s Gospel from Luke introduces us to one of the more unusual characters in scripture, the wealthy tax collector Zacchaeus. He’s mentioned only in Luke’s Gospel. And he’s the only one identified in any of the Gospels explicitly by his physical stature. Luke says that Zacchaeus had trouble seeing Jesus because he was “short in…
Today, I’m going to start off the sermon with a science lesson. For millennia now, humans have stood at the edge of the water and observed the motion of the waves… I’m sure that – living around Lake Erie – many of you have done this. But what exactly is a wave? It’s not an…
