Sermons

Mark 4:35-41   It was hard to know what to preach this week. On Mother’s Day I spoke about the difficulty of such holidays. People came to worship today with different needs, with both positive and negative experiences of their own father, and with both positive and negative experiences as a parent (or lack thereof). […]

Acts 2:1-21 The word “Pentecostal” typically refers to a particular brand of Christianity. Pentecostal Christians are those who believe that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit results in the gift of tongues (speaking in an unknown language) or the interpretation of tongues (being able to interpret this unknown language for others to understand). The terms

Luke 13:31-35 Most pastors, if they are honest, will admit that Mother’s Day is not an easy day for preaching. The trend within progressive churches is a sharp move away from celebrating Mother’s Day in worship, and with good reason. First, it is not a liturgical holiday. Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost –

Acts 8:26-40 The main character in our story today is so different from us that it can be hard for us to relate. We are not positive about his religion. He was possibly a Gentile, given the demographics of his geographic location. But since he traveled all the way to Jerusalem to worship, many scholars

John 20:19-31 There are many characters in the Bible with whom I can easily relate, and Thomas is definitely one of them. In fact, Thomas is probably in the top five. I grew up calling him Doubting Thomas. “Don’t be a doubting Thomas” we sang as children. The hand motions even had us shaking our

John 20:1-18 Taylor Mali is a wonderful poet in the genre of spoken word poetry, sometimes called slam poetry. This means that his work is intended to be performed, not read. So although I cannot do it as well as he does, I want to share with you his poem about speaking. In case you

Mark 11:1-11 (This sermon is from the point of view of a fictional character. She is not in the Bible, but I think she has some things to say to us today.) My father was a wealthy merchant. Of course, the Roman government took a large portion of his profits in taxes, not to mention

John 12:20-33 Young people today have been called the “selfie generation.” Selfies are, of course, photos that people take of themselves, typically with their phones, and then post online. The word “selfie” was Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year in 2013. There are trends within the selfie genre, if you will. For example, certain faces

John 2:13-22 What does Jesus look like in the image in your mind? In spite of the fact that Jesus was Jewish, and therefore of Semitic race, many of us have images of Jesus as fairly light-skinned, with blue eyes. In spite of the fact that Jesus lived during a time when bathing was not

Mark 8:31-38 I don’t know if this story is true, but I remember hearing about an old woman who hated the verse in the Bible about women submitting to their husbands. Whenever anyone would mention it, she would shake her head and say, “That’s not in the Bible.” Her pastor got frustrated with her stubborn