1 Tmothy 2:5

A sermon for All Saints Sunday

Fifty years ago Protestants didn’t celebrate All Saints Sunday. Now this Sunday has been transformed into a time of psychological comfort for those who have lost someone in the last year.

This festival raises three questions. First, who are the saints? Second, when they are no longer here, what is their situation? Third, can we communicate with them?

Behind such questions lies the big question: How do we decide such questions? How do you get there? Within the Christian church the real question has always been: What is salvation?

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A sermon for Reformation Sunday

The festival of the Reformation is often not celebrated today because it was long ago and things have changed. It took place in a university and involved complicated and abstract thinking. Now things are different. We are no longer fighting with the Catholics, and the important thing is to look to the future, work ahead, and not be focused on the past. But the “one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) has been lost.

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A sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

John 8:36

Halloween is coming soon. If you go to Germany, there is no trick-or-treating. If you go to France, there’s no trick-or-treating. If you go to Italy, Russia, China, India, or Egypt, there’s no trick-or-treating. Trick-or-treating is just something we Americans do. It has spread to Canada and is beginning to get a foothold in England and Hong Kong.

After Christmas, the Superbowl and Halloween are the most expensive holidays in our country. Why is Halloween so popular? It’s fun. The costumes, candy, decorations. Yet there are other things that are fun, too. Other sports, theater, music, festivals of all kinds.

What is it about Halloween that makes it such a big event? It has to do with the fun of being a little wicked, to dress and act as a scoundrel, to flirt with danger and to play with death. There are haunted houses, ghosts in graveyards, and witches on broomsticks.

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A sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Gospel text today is about the widow who was pounding on the door of the judge. What happened? It says in the first verse that this is about prayer: “He told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” Does it mean we have to pound harder to make God hear us? In Romans 8:26 it says we are like children and the Holy Spirit translates our prayers. What this parable is really about is what God is like and how God works.

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Luke 17:11-18; Ruth 1:15-18

A sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

We heard the Gospel text about the ten lepers, and you may have thought it was Thanksgiving. This text is often assigned for Thanksgiving. Why the ten lepers now? We are marching through Luke. But the Lectionary Committee had no trouble leaving out the parable of the Prodigal Son because they put it elsewhere. Why the ten lepers now?

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