As you know, I took a long vacation to Hawai’i over the past few weeks. As I sat there, enjoying the sights and sounds that are so foreign to us here in Western New York, I began to think about the senses that God has blessed us with. It is only fitting that today’s Psalm talks about being in the presence of God. If you’ll look back at our Psalm, and focus on verse four, I want to read it
Sermons
To better understand the part of Joseph's story in our first reading today, it would be helpful to read his whole story as recorded in Genesis chapters 37 and 39-50. These chapters present to us the inner character and personality of Joseph. Joseph's dreams, indicating that his entire family will bow to him, put him at odds not only with his brothers, but with his father Jacob as well. The
I wanted to try something different this week and summarize the readings for you in just a few sentences for each reading: Jeremiah: Those who trust in human strength and turn away from God are cursed. They live without hope in barrenness. But those who trust in God are like trees planted near a river. They have green leaves and bear much fruit. Because the human heart is deceitful and wicked,
We sometimes think that one of the first things that Jesus did was to call the disciples. But as we heard in Luke 4:14, Jesus began to teach in the synagogues of Galilee before returning to Nazareth and the confrontation that happens which we have heard about the previous two weeks. Following this event, the Lectionary skips over the rest of Chapter 4 of Luke, in which Jesus travels to Capernaum,
One of the challenges of preaching on days where we have readings that are so well-known, like the one from 1 Corinthians today, is that people often already have an opinion and so they think they know the reading in and out. And so familiarity breeds a challenge. Virtually everyone loves these words we hear today. Virtually everyone thinks that they know what they mean, and to the preacher, it