Delivered while pastor at Sojourners United Church of Christ in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Scriptures: 1Samuel 21:1-6; Matthew 12:1-8 When the first two hymns of the day are “Holy, Holy, Holy” and “Lord, Make Me More Holy”, you might get the idea that there’s a theme here. And it’s true. I’ve been thinking about “holy”. The idea of holiness, of something being holy. This is one of those themes … Read more
Scripture: 2Samuel 11:1-12:15 One Sojourner, who shall remain nameless, asked me this week, “Is it time for lust yet?” This might seem like a strange question unless you knew that I had been preaching a series of sermons drawing on the David stories and that one of those stories—several actually, but one famous one—had to … Read more
Scripture: 2Samuel 18:5-33 This is the last Sunday we’ll be spending with David for a while, so I want to try to wrap things up as best I can, and we’ll get to the scripture reading in just a few moments. Again I need to fill in some parts of the story that it would … Read more
Scriptures: Psalm 137 and Mark 9:30-37 It’s been awhile since I’ve done this, this preaching thing. We’ve had some special events going on at worship recently—hymn sing, picnic and outdoor worship, Nancy Elsenheimer from Cleveland last week. I’ve gotten a bit out of the habit, and I feel like I sort of have to ease … Read more
Scripture: Mark 9:38-50 The scripture reading for this morning follows on the heels of the one from last week, and the sermon this morning in a way is a continuation of last week’s sermon as well. I’m struggling with the scripture reading this morning. Actually, that’s not quite right. I’m struggling with myself over an … Read more
Scripture: Mark 10:2-16 I can be pretty precise about this, even though it was forty-two years ago. It was a crisp, gorgeous fall afternoon, just about this time of year, and I was sitting in a college classroom wishing I wasn’t sitting in a college classroom. It was a course called Modern Religious Thought. We … Read more
Scripture: Mark 10:17-31 Sojourners United Church of Christ. A safe place to begin. A safe place to begin again. Those are words you probably recognize as being at the top of our bulletin every Sunday. They describe, I suppose, some combination of who we think we are and who we hope to be. Hope to … Read more
Scripture: Psalm 42 and Luke 17:20-21 A number of you have had the experience of asking me, for one reason or another, what I’m going to preach on this coming Sunday. Like Jeanine did when she and Karen agreed to sing this morning. She wanted to know what the theme was going to be so … Read more
Scripture: Luke 6:27-38 I don’t know whether at Sojourners you have to explain or justify the lifting up of domestic violence or sexual assault as a central theme in worship. Since Sojourners are pretty open-minded and good natured, cooperative at least about some things, and used to dealing with lots of different things in worship, … Read more
Scriptures: Deuteronomy 32:1-4, 10-13 and Ephesians 3:14-21 I hope my words this morning don’t seem simplistic. They seem a little that way to me, but what I have to say is what I have to say. It’s not really part of the discussion that will follow worship, but related to it in the sense of … Read more