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…
Most of you should now know that I tend to favor picking up themes from the Gospel reading. So it’s going to be an interesting wade through the Hebrew Bible today as we look at this week’s first reading, from Genesis 32, which is one of those readings that just seems to be a story…
There’s a whole bunch of “if”s in our epistle reading today: IF we have died with him, we will also live with him; IF we endure, we will also reign with him; IF we deny him, he will also deny us; IF we are faithless, he remains faithful– for he cannot deny himself. (2 Tim…
In Luke, chapter 6, verse 24, we hear, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” So goes the story of the rich man in today’s Gospel reading. He should have known better. He could have – and should have – done better. He received good things, but he built up…
Bleeech! We’ve entered that time in the church year where I dislike preaching, because it seems like all we hear about in the Gospel reading is money, money, and more money. I guess it’s better than having to preach about divorce or circumcision… but still, I don’t like it. And since I don’t like it,…
Last week, we heard from Paul’s Epistle to Philemon. This week, we get an Epistle to Timothy, also written from “Paul.” We’re going to start with a short Bible lesson this week. Of the thirteen letters that were traditionally attributed to authorship by Paul, scholars now think that only seven are authentically his: Romans, 1…
