Category: Posts

1 Cor 1:10-21

A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

In our 1 Corinthians text for today, Paul is talking about all the quarreling among the Christians in Corinth. There were factions. There were those who say they belong to Paul, and others who belong to Apollos, and still others who belong to Peter, and those who belong to Christ. Things weren’t going well. It had become a matter of personalities.

Paul had to deal with that throughout his career because it had become evident that he wasn’t an impressive person. It seems he might have been an epileptic, or he might have stuttered, or he might have had bad eyesight.

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John 1:29-42 

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Epiphany

Have you heard of “The Nutshell Library”? It’s a collection of four miniature books, published in 1962, by Maurice Sendak. They are tiny pocket-sized books, perfect for small hands.

I was once given a pocket-sized New Testament, but the print was so small it was difficult to read, and I missed the Old Testament.

In the Bible there are, however, certain verses that are like the whole Bible in a nutshell. Our gospel text today has one such sentence, John 1:29: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

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Matthew 2:1-12

A sermon for Epiphany

We in the West celebrate Christmas from Christmas Day to Epiphany, January 6th, and then we say the Twelve Days of Christmas are over. But in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, they celebrate Christmas on January 6th, last Tuesday, what we call Epiphany.

In the Western Church this means that we forget about Epiphany, and that is really too bad because it is a major festival. The word itself means “shining forth,” and it is celebrated at this time because the days are growing longer. The light is coming back. We’re celebrating the fact that we are no longer in darkness. You know the great place in Isaiah 9:2 that we use at Christmas: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Over against the darkness, we celebrate the light.

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John 1:1-18

A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas

In this remarkable prologue, the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John, one of the key points is something we call “grace.” What is grace? It can mean many things. “Grace” is a women’s name. When we watch Olympic ice-skaters, we are awed by their “grace.” When we say someone was “gracious” to us, we mean they were kind and thoughtful.

Perhaps the most well-known hymn is “Amazing Grace.” Despite the hymn’s popularity, it’s really quite vague about what grace is and is not.

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Matthew 11:2-11

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

Here in Matthew 11, we again have John the Baptist.

It’s really something that there comes a question, not only from the disciples of John the Baptist, but from the Baptist himself: “Who are you, Jesus? Are you another one of the prophets? Or are you the one promised who is to come?”

The answer comes by quoting this place in Isaiah 35, also Isaiah 61, where it says there are these signs. We talk about signs in the sun, moon, and stars. That’s found in Luke 21:25-27.

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