Sermons

What a time we live in!  Does not feel like any other time we may have lived through … Feels like everything is changing, as if nothing remains the same, and that it is hard to hope for better.

BUT … The prophet Isaiah was right when he said, “All people are like grass and all beauty is like the flowers of the field. Grass withers and the flowers fade, but only the Word of God endures forever.”

The Word of God endures forever.

The Word of God made flesh, who came to us as a baby, who lived, taught, suffered and died for us … Jesus … Jesus has been resurrected to eternal life. Jesus lives for all time. Read more…

In the U. S. we believe in equality before the law … we did not always believe that … ask a woman or a person with black, red, or yellow skin … ask a gay or a lesbian. We have not always been equal before the law but over our history we have moved hugely in that direction. Early in our history you had to be a white male of a certain age who owned property in order to vote or hold public office … no longer … but the expansion of the voting franchise and the widening of opportunities to hold public office are just small samples of the ways in which we have moved towards equality under the law.  Good for us!

The ancient Egyptians did not believe in equality before the law. The Pharoah was the law and, well, he was the Pharoah. He had more rights and more power and more wealth than anyone else. Everyone else was VALUED only to the extent that they could assist the Pharoah or add to his power and wealth. They could be de-valued if they were seen as troublemakers or, as in the case of the descendants of Joseph and his brothers, potential troublemakers for the Pharoah.

And the new Pharoah saw the farmers and shepherds descended from Jacob living in the land of Goshen as aliens and potential rebels. The land of Goshen was in the eastern part of the Nile River delta, near the border with Canaan. Perhaps that was part of why the Pharoah was concerned. He must have been very concerned about threats to his rule because he took away the property rights promised them by an earlier Pharoah and made them work on his projects rather than theirs. Read more…

Today I ask that we consider what is meant when the Bible makes references to the “good news.” What exactly is that?

The Gospel according to Mark introduces itself with this phrase “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ…” Gospel is another word for “good news.” Mark could have said, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ…” It all means the same thing.

In Mark the beginning of the gospel is marked by John the Baptizer coming out of the desert preaching a baptism for repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Baptism did not forgive the sins. It simply meant that the person being baptized truly repented of their sins and sought forgiveness.

John was arrested by the authorities because he offended them. Shortly after his arrest, Mark tells us that “… Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The phrase “come near” can also be translated as “at hand.” The kingdom of God was at hand. Both mean the same thing. Read more…

This sermon began as I reacted to stuff I was seeing on the internet, TV or podcasts as well as in some of my reading. I was overwhelmed by all the different philosophies that I heard being advocated. And I was depressed because it seemed that none of those philosophies included Jesus or Yahweh, the God of Israel. I was appalled, in particular, by the notion so popular today that there is no such thing as objective truth.

We all have our own truth, I was told. Because of the diversity of humanity and its cultures, no one can assert that there is only one truth.

The purpose of this sermon is to respond to that lie, at least I see it as a great lie. Yes, there is diversity of people and cultures but that does not mean that everybody has their own truth.

I believe that Jesus is the truth. That is his word, says the Gospel according to John, at John 14:6 … “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” What do those words mean? The Way: Jesus is the path to God the Father. The Truth: Jesus speaks and shows the truth of God. The Life: Jesus gives eternal life to people. Read more…

Part of the problem is that we are a church committed to sticking to the Lectionary.  For those who do not know, that is a set of readings from the Bible spread over three years that provides a wide exposure to the Scriptures, albeit not 100% complete.  It offers the advantage that people to go to widely different churches are exposed to the same Scriptures on any given Sunday.  So, we and our neighbors can compare notes on what our churches’ ministers did with the same text when last we gathered in our sanctuaries to worship.

And this week and last week our Lectionary readings from the Bible deal with exceedingly serious stuff …  scriptures that deal with expulsion from the family, poverty and deprivation and this week, the sacrifice of children in religious rituals.  Give me a break! Read more…

I am pleased to be with you this morning to worship our God in spirit and truth. And, as I begin
this sermon, just a reminder … when I preach, I am preaching to myself. If something in what I say
helps in your faith journey, and I hope it does, just know that I am preaching to all of us this
morning … myself included. May it be a blessing to us all.

Moses and the Hebrew people were looking to the future as they camped in the Sinai. The Pharaoh in Egypt had not asked for their consent to be his slaves. But now God was asking those
newly freed slaves to agree to a covenant with God and to commit to a future with God.

In Romans Paul was also looking forward to the future. Read more…

Names are important. And this Sunday is devoted to the Holy Trinity. There is a name for you … the Holy Trinity … what the heck does that mean?

Well, it is a name given by most Christians to God … the ancient God of Israel … the God who created all things, seen and unseen … the alpha and the omega.

Two problems: first, the word Trinity does not appear in the Scriptures; second, God’s chosen people were and are monotheists, believers in one God and one God only … the word Trinity sounds as if Christians worship three gods.

Why should Christians worship the Holy Trinity if it is not in the Scriptures? Well, it turns out that often in the Scriptures God and Jesus and the Spirit appear together. For example, at the Creation God called the heavens and the earth into being … the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus, the Word, was present at the Creation, being co-eternal with present with God. Think of Jesus as the architect or the blueprint for Creation if you want. The Spirit was present as well … Genesis tells us that the Spirit moved across the face of the waters of chaos even before God said, “Let there be light.” Read more…

The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Church, our predecessors who merged to form the UCC, were always a little skeptical of creeds.  They did not want the creeds to be a requirement for becoming a Christian. Our founders were so insistent about basing our faith life entirely on the scriptures that they did not want anything else, like creeds, getting in the way.

UCCers want to preserve freedom of conscience for all believers.  They wanted members of our church to covenant with one another to struggle with the scriptures and follow God’s will for our lives as best we can discern that. They did not want to require the faithful to sign onto a long list of specific beliefs, some of which we might accept, some we might be skeptical about, and some we would just as soon do without. Read more…

This is the third Sunday of the Easter season. Easter did not end with that first Sunday two weeks ago. As a way of recognizing that we are still in the Easter season, it seems fitting to share the resurrection account as provided in the Gospel according to Luke.

In particular let us focus on the day of resurrection after the event. Luke gives us some insight into how the disciples were struggling to understand what had happened that resurrection morning.

First, they were disbelieving. When the women returned from the tomb telling the disciples that the tomb was empty and that Jesus was risen, the disciples did not believe them. Luke says that they thought the women were telling an idle tale. Their disbelief calls to mind the book of the prophet Habakkuk in the Old Testament (1:5): “… a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told.” Read more…

Often, when people hear that I am a preacher and have been preaching for the past twenty years, they will say something like, “Oh, you must have a lot of sermons in your files. Surely, it’s easy enough at this point just to pull out an old sermon and preach it again.”

In fact, I am rarely able to re-use a sermon, and certainly not the entirety of a previous sermon. I can sometimes use pieces perhaps but not the whole thing. And the sermon always must be shaped especially for each occasion.

There are good reasons for not re-using the same sermons. First, the preacher is not the same person the second and third and fourth time around. The preacher will be older, ideally will have read more widely, will have gained more experience, and will be deepened in his faith. It is a different preacher from the one who preaches initially from the Scriptural text. Read more…

We just moved passed the halfway point in the season of Lent. We have plumbed the depth of our need for help and worked to get rid of barriers to the coming of our Savior. Now we get to see the coming light of the resurrection, the primary event in our salvation.

In the Gospel of John, we are in a kind of transition as well. Chapter 11 of John marks the end of Jesus’ public ministry. Next, we move into Jesus’ final trip to Jerusalem where he enters the city in triumph and is cast out in the most shameful and painful death the Romans could devise.

Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead seems, to modern and rational folks like us, something that is hard to get our heads around. People don’t come back from death, do they? And if they do, why didn’t my daughter, mother, father, grandparents, beloved friends come back to me from their deaths? Read more…

More than that the Pharisees had become aware that Jesus’ disciples were also baptizing, perhaps in greater number than had John the Baptizer. Jesus decides that it is a good time to leave Judea and head back to Galilee.

There was more one way back to Galilee, but the shortest way was through Samaria, lying between Judea and Galilee. However, Samaria was populated by a Jewish sect, known as Samaritans, with whom non-Samaritan Jews had significant differences. Not all Samaritans could trace their roots back to Abraham, as could non-Samaritan Jews. Also, Samaritans believed that the appropriate place of worship was not the Jerusalem Temple but in a different location, at Mt. Gerizim. The Jews had destroyed the Samaritan shrine there about 130 years before Jesus was born. Read more…

I am not good at picking out titles for my sermons. Mostly I just take a line from one of the morning’s scriptures as my title. I did not do that this morning. I was not trying to be flippant, but I did want to provoke you to think about sin, especially during this season of Lent.

A lot of people think that the Scriptures are about sin and only about sin and sometimes only about one sort of sin. Some people would have us focus on violence and war as the primary sin about which we should be concerned. There are people very concerned about sexual sins, perhaps mostly about same sex relationships which they regard as sinful. I disagree, but there are such people. There are people who want to talk about economic sins, where powerful rich people keep others poor and powerless.

Well, the Bible talks about sin. Jesus talks about sin. I am going to jump ahead in my sermon for just a second to say that I am one of those folks who thinks the Bible is basically about one sin, a sin that can show up in a variety of ways, a variety of sins. Please listen as I try to make the case for that argument. Read more…

One of the Old Testament readings in the lectionary for this Sunday, Transfiguration Sunday, comes from Exodus. It is the story of Moses going up the mountain to encounter God in the burning bush after which he came down with the Ten Commandments. Read more…

There are three words in Jesus’ sermon on which I want us to focus: salt, light, and you. Notice the simplicity … each a word with which everybody is familiar … each a single syllable. No chance of confusion … Jesus is going to basics.

Take those three words one at a time. Salt. Salt.

Everybody knows what salt is. It is the white, grainy stuff that we put on our food to make it taste good. These days we are told to use salt in moderation. We need to avoid having high blood pressure so be careful how much salt we use.

But salt is what gives foods the taste we seek. Jesus referred to salt that has lost its taste. Such spoiled salt is only good for throwing out the kitchen door. How does salt lose its taste? It can absorb moisture from the air or from steam coming off something else we are cooking. Watered down salt is worthless. Read more…

The experiences we’ve had in our lives certainly affect our understanding of the words we read in Scripture, don’t they?  I think that many people must brace themselves when they read or hear the words of Jesus, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Many of us have heard preachers in their sermons tie in their call for us to repent with graphic denunciations of all that we might have done wrong to demonstrate our need to repent.  Then those same preachers follow up with threats of hellfire and brimstone if we don’t repent.  So, a first reading of Jesus’ words this morning might evoke for many of us very uncomfortable feelings associated with wrong-doing and with fears of punishment.

Based on our culture and our experience Jesus’ words “the kingdom of heaven has come near” may also suggest punishment.  The use of the words “kingdom of heaven” was and is a way that Jews can reverently refer to You-Know-Who without saying the name that is too holy to say directly.  Read more…

This morning, we focus on Jesus’ baptism.  Many of you know that I was raised in a Baptist church.  Baptists will cite these verses from Matthew as proof that Jesus was baptized by full immersion in the waters of the Jordan River, and that therefore we should all be baptized by full immersion.  The basis here for this belief is the line from Matthew that Jesus “came up from the water.”  When I was baptized by full immersion, my arms were crossed over my chest, and I was lowered backwards into the water and then lifted back up to the standing position by the arms of the preacher.  Baptists would argue that Jesus was similarly raised back up by John, hence, as the scripture says, he came up from the water.

The Baptists may be right.  However, we cannot be sure.  Jesus’ coming up from the water is also consistent with Jesus having waded into the Jordan up to his knees, with John having baptized him by pouring water over his head, and with Jesus then returning to the bank of the river.  Jesus’ coming up from the water may simply have meant that he waded out of the river onto its bank.  We don’t know.  Hence in the UCC we don’t prescribe the volume of water to be used in baptism. Pastors are free to sprinkle, pour, or immerse. Read more…

What an odd time of the year this is! We have concluded the season of Advent, the first Sunday of which is the New Year’s Day, the first day, of the Christian liturgical calendar. And we are now only a very few days away from New Year’s Day, the first day of the secular calendar.

It is a kind of in-between time. The excitement of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day has largely come and gone even though we continue in a residual kind of Christmassy spirit. We look ahead eagerly to the excitement of that one last tick of the clock in 2025 and the first tick of the clock in 2026.

I find that this in-between time is a good time for thinking more deeply about my life, about my family, and about our culture and our times. I think of it as a kind of “time-out” when our schedules slow down and the slower pace makes room for deeper thoughts about who we are and who we might want to be.

The Jewish people to whom Third Isaiah prophesied were in a kind of in-between time. The first returning exiles had left Babylon after six decades of captivity in Babylon, and later exiles would have spent even more time in that alien land. They were returning to a city that had been smashed, literally, with very little, if any, of the city’s buildings still standing. Read more…

Some sermons are easier to write than others.  Sometimes it is hard to know what to say … the topic is difficult … the Scriptures are complicated, and they may be confusing.  This sermon was a little harder to prepare however because there is so much to say about joy … the joy of following Jesus the Christ … the joy of serving the will of God in mission and ministry … the joy of knowing that there is a providential plan for the future of all of Creation.   Joy is so much more than the mere emotion of happiness, and it is very hard to communicate the fullness and richness of the joy of serving our Savior. Read more…

Paul tells the Philippians in verse 4 of Chapter 4 to “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice.”

Thank is an amazing thing for Paul to write. Paul was in prison, probably in Rome, facing a capital charge that would soon cause his execution. What on earth could Paul have had to be joyful about? And why was he telling this congregation to rejoice?

Two thoughts as I try to answer those questions. The first is that the word joy and its cognates (joyful, rejoice, etc.) appears second in number in the Bible only to love. A key characteristic of Christian living should be joy. The angels announced the birth of Jesus at Luke 2:10 by saying to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people …”

Jesus undertook his ministry for the joy of it says Hebrews 12:1-2 “… let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,  looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” Read more…

What are the most common words in the Bible?  Okay, so take out the a, the an, the the … focus on the words used by the Bible to tell us how to behave or how our faith might make us feel or what the Bible says about how we are supposed to be with one another.

If you guessed love, you are right … 842 times the word love or loved or loving shows up. What comes in second place? Joy … some version of joy, enjoy, joyful, rejoice … shows up 694 times.

Don’t quote me as an expert who is being exact on those numbers … that was what a quick look-up showed. The point is that the word “joy” shows up a lot in the Bible, maybe second only to “love.”

I chose the words of the thirtieth Psalm for our Call to Worship this morning because it lifts up the joy that comes to relieve us in our distress. “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Read more…

Well, there is not one of us who is not a sinner. We experience grace and forgiveness because our Savior Jesus the Christ took our sins with him to the cross and made atonement for us there.

So, what is all this stuff about All Saints Day … why are we talking about saints? Brother Alan, sinner that you are, I thought only Catholics, and the Orthodox Church talked about saints. Read more…

Sometimes a preacher just does not quite know what to say from the pulpit. This is one of those times.

I would love to spend my time today sharing stories about the good times my wife and I had visiting friends in Maine over the last couple of weeks. Or I could tell you about my attempt to eat as many oysters, mussels, lobsters, and fresh-caught Gulf of Maine fish as I could. Yum!

Unfortunately, there has been a very large cloud hanging over our good times that makes it difficult to celebrate. During the past couple of months, the people of the United States have suffered through an onslaught of violence that is impossible to ignore. And that explains why I stole a line from Jeremiah for the title of this sermon. He grieved the sinfulness of ancient Judah and the coming destruction by invading Babylonian armies. I have been almost immobilized by sadness and grief over recent violent developments in no particular order … Read more…

Our two Scripture readings today do not seem to have much in common. A very young Jeremiah is called by God to be God’s prophets. Jesus reaches out to a woman and heals her.

Let me offer a couple of similarities. First, they were initiated by God. Jeremiah did not, as far as we know, seek out God and ask God to make him a prophet. Indeed, Jeremiah seems, as have many called to mission and ministry by God, protested that there were good reasons why God should not do what God intended. In Jeremiah’s case, he protested that he was too young.

It didn’t work of course … never does … God is not interested in our excuses, especially if we protest our weaknesses. Why? Because God’s strength is more than enough to compensate for any weaknesses or problems that we see with God’s plan.

God put God’s words in Jeremiah’s mouth. And God’s word was powerful. God told Jeremiah:

“Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

God’s words must be really powerful! And it was God who initiated the encounter with Jeremiah.

Read more…

Faith or faithfulness is not a simple subject. In the Old Testament references to faith or faithfulness often refer to the faithfulness, the khesed or steadfast love, exhibited by God to his Creation and to his people. Later references in the Scriptures refer to our faith, our faith in that selfsame God as most fully revealed in the person of Jesus, whom we honor as the Christ.

The unknown author of the book of Hebrews says that “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Or, as the novelist Madeleine L’Engle put it, “Some things have to be believed to be seen.”

That is completely out of step with modernity. We believe what we see, hear, taste, touch, smell … we need physical confirmation to believe. A prime example of that attitude is Marxist Socialism, where all is material … history is determined entirely by material forces … there is no Christian or Jewish God or indeed, there are no gods whatsoever. Faith is immaterial and therefore does not exist. In my view it is impossible for someone who espouses the Marxist ideology of materialism and atheism to be a faithful follower of our God. Read more…