2008

Scripture: Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-14 I’m going to begin the sermon before we hear the scripture reading today. As you see from the bulletin, we’re still on Jeremiah. I’ve made it through two sermons based on Jeremiah without saying very much at all about the times in which Jeremiah lived, the history he was a … Read more

Scripture: Jeremiah 14:1-9 Sometimes as a child begins to think about God and wonder about God she might ask a question like “where is God”, which might be just one way of putting into words much larger, more difficult questions about who God is and what God is like and how we’re supposed to understand … Read more

Scripture: Jeremiah 20:3-18 I’ve been taking what has turned out to be a series of sermons on Jeremiah, if you will pardon what sounds like a sports cliché, one week at a time. No looking ahead. No planning what I want to say three weeks from now. Just a week at a time, and after … Read more

Scripture: Matthew 16:21-28 You may have gathered from the fact that the scripture this morning is from Matthew that I am moving on from Jeremiah. And if you gathered that, you would be somewhat right, but only somewhat. There are actually lots of things still on my mind from Jeremiah, but one in particular that … Read more

Scripture: Matthew 11:25-30; Mark 1:14-15 OK, so now I really am done with Jeremiah. For those who may be relatively new to Sojourners or haven’t been around these last few months, I’ve been preaching on texts from the book of Jeremiah for about the last month and a half. But it’s a new month, a … Read more

Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34 Last time I preached, I said that I planned for the remainder of this fall and maybe into the winter—who knows—to do a series of sermons on the teachings of Jesus. There are a lot of them, and they cover a lot of ground, touch on lots of topics, come in the … Read more

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37 I have spent the better part of this past week being sick with bronchitis and am still not fully recovered. I had promised myself that since this is a communion service and since we have a congregational meeting following worship today, that I would keep the sermon on the short side. With … Read more

Scripture: Mark 10:17-23 There is a teaching of Jesus in the scripture reading for this morning. The question is: What is it? It’s not stated directly. It comes in the form of a story, and although stories do have messages and teachings in them, they are very often not unambiguous ones. Stories are open to … Read more

Scripture: Luke 22:14-27 I’m guessing that some of you, not all of you but some significant portion of you, are a little bit turned off just by the title of the sermon for this morning. I might be one of those people, but I decided to go with the title anyway so as to not … Read more

Scripture: Matthew 22:15-22 I hope what I have to say this morning will not seem inappropriate. For better or worse, it is what I have to say, and I decided not to censor myself and try to talk about something else that my head or my heart wasn’t really in. So for better or worse… … Read more