A sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
John 6:56-69
You have heard the Gospel text for today. They is important words. You is thinking that, I can tell. You is thinking that they is important.
Maybe you’re really wondering if I’m losing it. How can I say that? You “is” They “is”? It says something about language. In the Seventeenth Century, the time of Shakespeare, the lower classes had no trouble saying: You “is.”
A sermon for the Season of Lent
Psalm 104 is a creation Psalm about the glory of nature and the whole of creation. This Psalm, like other creation Psalms, is the basis for hymns such as “All creatures of our God and King,” “Let all things now living,” and “All things bright and beautiful.”
As you likely know, in 1965 the British veterinarian, Alf Wight, took the title of the hymn “All things bright and beautiful” and under the pen name James Herriot, wrote a series of poignant stories about the animals he treated and their owners.
A sermon for the Season of Lent
Some years ago, the beloved father of a family died, and his son asked to read Psalm 90 at his father’s funeral. It is a beautiful psalm, and it ends like this:
“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”
Psalm 130
A sermon for the Season of Lent
Why do we have Lent? For those of us in the Protestant tradition, it is not so obvious. It is important for us to realize why. We don’t have any trouble with Christmas. Christmas was first made a celebration in 346 A.D., 350 years after Jesus was born. We have no trouble getting kids ready for Christmas. But then there is Ash Wednesday, and maybe we should do something more? We don’t want to be like those who say we can’t eat meat on Fridays, that we have to do certain things. There is something about suffering, and maybe we should give up Lent for Lent. What’s it for?
1 Cor 9:16-23
A sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
We have noted in this season of Epiphany that the great false religion of our day is spirituality. In fact, we could say spirituality is the heresy of all 2000 years that Christian faith has existed.
What is spirituality? Those who are spiritual are those who are dedicated, those who are devout, who are sincere, who are other worldly. Who knows what all is included?