Faith-Sustaining Patterns in a World of Stockpiles The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon. Faith cannot be stockpiled. It needs a pattern of replenishment. Today, the disciples are hungry. While their stomachs may not be rumbling, their hunger is shown in their lack of certainty about…
First Sunday of Christmas Gospel: Luke 2:22- 40 22When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23(as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), 24and they offered…
The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon. Hope Born in a World of Humbugs Dressed up with presents, lights, TV specials, extra concerts, parties, and spending money, there is a sense that Christmas is the time to feel good, do good, and perhaps live a little…
Fourth Sunday of Advent The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon. Those Who Hear and Do Who is God’s family? Where is God’s home? In the church we often speak of our home parish as a family. Many of us grew up thinking of the church…
Third Sunday of Advent The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon. Give Witness and Rejoice The third Sunday of Advent—also known as Gaudete (rejoice)—is one in which the church has rejoiced as the advent of the Messiah draws nearer. Whether or not you mark this Sunday with a…
Thanksgiving Service The sermon will be a post on our Facebook page. Please click on link to view sermon. How Much Is Enough? How do we define an abundant life? Is it by how much we have? Do we define it in comparison or contrast to what others have? Too often, our definition of an abundant life keeps…
Change of Heart The people who hear Peter’s testimony and preaching are cut to the heart. The writer of 1 Peter instructs believers to love deeply from the heart. The disciples who encounter the risen Christ notice afterward that their hearts were “burning” within them as Jesus reveals the scriptures and then himself to them in…
When the Sadducees encounter Jesus with a technical question, he responds by humanizing and placing divine value upon each character in the Sadducees’ hypothetical scenario. Jesus’ response is about resurrection and about naming people as children of God and of light. The answer Jesus gives the Sadducees is about God, whose presence means life. This…
In the gospel today, Zacchaeus joyfully welcomes Jesus into his home, where Jesus prompts a changed heart and mind in his host and proclaims salvation. All this reveals an undercurrent of hospitality and welcome that propels much of the narrative of the Bible. As in other instances of practiced hospitality, something important changes. Salvation is…
We may expect the religious insider to be blessed, the moral person to be right with God. But as is so often the case, Jesus’ parable for today sweeps away conventional expectations. Jesus surprises the disciples and us when he says it’s not the Pharisee but rather the tax collector, that morally suspect, second-class citizen,…