Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Happy Ground Hog Day. We are here on 2nd of February, half way between the 21st of December and the 20th of March. Roughly half way through winter. Will Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow? Will there be six more weeks of winter or not?

In the Roman Catholic tradition this Sunday is also the Festival of Candlemas. It started back in 496 A.D. and marks the time when one celebrates putting out the candles because there is now enough light. The light is growing. There is a rhyme for the Festival of Candlemas, and it goes like this: “If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will have another fight. If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, winter won’t come again.” Very much like Ground Hog Day.

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1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

In this season of Epiphany, we are looking at how God is light, and then he is the word which produces light and life. The 1 Corinthians text for today describes the church. Paul writes here that the church is the body of Christ. What is astonishing about this text is that it doesn’t say the church is like a body. It says the church is Christ’s body. It’s not an analogy, not a metaphor, and it’s not a sociological construct of some sort. It says the church is Christ’s body.

One way to see what’s at stake here is to look at the problem of Christian unity.

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John 2:1-11

A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany

We are in the season of Epiphany, the season of the coming of the light. There’s a problem with this and the problem is like the line you know from the poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.”
There’s light, light everywhere, but who’s got the light?

This comes out in two major ways. There are about 40,000 Christian denominations in the United States, although they can be grouped in about seven major groupings. Why is this? In part it’s because every single verse in the Bible has all multiple interpretations so there is no way to say: “Ah, yes, this verse is self-evident.” Or: “That verse is clear.” There is tremendous variation in terms of how things are interpreted.

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Isaiah 43:1; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

A Sermon for the First Sunday after Epiphany

How long can a person live without water? On average a person can survive without water only about three days.
We know the problem of water shortages and droughts. (Perhaps some examples.) In Isaiah 44:3 the Lord says: “I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground.”

And the problem of floods and too much water. (Perhaps some examples.) Genesis 7 tells the story of the flood which lasted forty days.

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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 they were so “gracious” to us, we mean they were kind and thoughtful.

For Christians “grace” is a key word. Last week we talked about the hymn “Amazing Grace,” and noted that despite its popularity, it’s quite vague about what grace is and is not.
Luther is famous for saying “grace alone,” but what exactly is it?

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