2nd Sunday after Trinity – June 26, 2022 Patience If you’re zealous to talk about Roe v. Wade and its implications this morning. I’m not avoiding it. We’ll get to it. I ask for your patience if you’re exhausted about how much you talked or listened about Roe v. Wade since Friday. I will be addressing it, … Read more
5th Sunday of Easter If there’s ever a book of the scriptures that people want explained, which is it? The Book of Revelation. It’s singular, not Revelations plural, but one Revelation, as the book opens by saying: The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must … Read more
13th Sunday after Pentecost – Ephesians 5:22-33 – 2021 Ephesians 5’s teaching on marriage is a challenge for the church today. There is one phrase that particularly goes against our sinful nature. “…the two shall become one flesh” Now, we don’t think much of those words. We get hung up on the opening verse of … Read more
John 20: 19-31 When considering the infamous account of “doubting Thomas”, we often skip over the beginning, and focus on questions of why Thomas demanded to see our Lord himself, and refused to accept anything else. To be sure, that is important for us to consider. But it’s far too easy to skip over what … Read more
Psalm 118: 19-29 Palm Sunday is one of our most iconic Sundays of the year: the visual of the procession, our Lord on a donkey, children singing, palms being waved and strewn on the path. Perhaps it’s the only time Jesus received praise worthy of a king! We heard earlier from John’s Gospel that the … Read more
Mark 10:32-45 Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many If we cannot make sense of these … Read more
Deny Yourself and follow the Christ. That was the theme of our readings. We heard it first in the 10 commandments God gave to his people from the Book of Exodus. Far from being arbitrary rules we must follow, a set of hoops to hop through to prove our faith , the commandments are a … Read more
Second Sunday in Lent – B 2021 Mark 8: 27-38 Jesus is not the Christ that we sinners wanted, but he is the Christ we sinners needed. Here in the middle of Mark’s Gospel, we heard Jesus ask his disciples who everyone thought that he was. Some people thought he was Elijah, the prophet … Read more
Water, Wilderness, Kingdom Mark 1: 9-15 In Lent, we tend to focus on Jesus’ work and suffering during Holy Week. But our lessons this morning remind us to consider more broadly what it meant for Jesus to enter human flesh and walk through this world of ours. Jesus would walk a familiar path through the … Read more
Our Lenten Midweek theme, Return From Exile, will have a series of images for us to consider each evening service. Each set of images will have an Old Testament image compared to a New Testament or eternal image. This series was written by one of my Old Testament teachers at the seminary, and he wrote … Read more