2007

Scripture: Romans 12 The title of this sermon, “What We Expect”, does not mean that this is a sermon about what we expect to take place in the coming year. I’m not peering into any crystal balls today. And I haven’t talked to God about what we are to expect. I heard somewhere recently that … Read more

Readings: Romans 12:1-3Letter from the Birmingham City Jail” Martin Luther King, Jr. was an important person for me in my formative years, and so it is hard for me to let the occasion of his birthday observance pass without bringing it into our worship service and into my preaching, especially since I know there are … Read more

Scripture: Luke 4:14-21 I suspect you will find the sermon this morning to be…unusual. I found myself in the mood to experiment a little this week, so instead of making my ordinary effort to gather up my thoughts, sort through them, and present them to you in some more or less organized fashion, I decided … Read more

Scripture: Philippians 3:4-16 I have church on my mind this morning, probably because we have this congregational meeting coming up after church where we will be dealing with important organizational matters and receiving reports that have to do with the total life of the church. I’m not going to preach about that. I’ll leave the … Read more

Scripture: Psalm 51 I have some words to say about apology this morning. Actually I’ll have quite a few words to say about apology before I’m done, and they’ll carry over into another sermon or two after the intergenerational event next Sunday. Why “apology”? Where is this idea coming from? Well… It seems there has … Read more

Scripture: Matthew 5:21-26 Let me try to pick up from where I left off two weeks ago. I was talking about apologies, mostly the public sort of apology where an official pronouncement is made apologizing for some collective historical sin, like the proposed apology for slavery that caused such a stir in the Virginia legislature … Read more

Scripture: Matthew 4:1-11 This sermon is, at least in my own mind, a continuation both of what I was saying last Sunday and the direction of my thinking and brief speaking on Ash Wednesday. I said at the end of the sermon last week that the idea of wilderness, spiritual wilderness if you will, is … Read more

Scripture: Joel 2:12-17 and Matthew 6:16-18 I got it into my head that I was going to preach a sermon today on fasting. Don’t ask me why, because I’m not sure…Well, it is a Lenten theme and all. The two scriptures we heard today, both talking about fasting, are traditionally read on Ash Wednesday. And … Read more

Scripture: Matthew 15:21-28 In honor of Women’s History Month, I decided to read the four gospels with an eye to the way women are portrayed, or not portrayed, in what for Christians is the heart of the Bible. I wanted to try to do that with an open mind, setting aside as much as possible … Read more

Scripture: Psalm 25; John 16:29-34 The sermon last week got a little longer than I had intended it to be, so I went back and cut out a part at the beginning. What I cut out wasn’t directly relevant to what I was talking about last week, so it was expendable so far as that … Read more