God With US

Reading: Genesis 4:1-16

This week, the week of Christmas, I preached on one of the least Christmasy stories I could think of, mostly because it's the sort of story we've got to understand if we're going to understand Christmas.

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Preached on December 20, 2009 at PLWC.

God WITH Us

Reading: John 1:1-14

We're continuing with our Advent theme for this year: God With Us. This week we focused on the second word to see how God is with us.

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Preached on December 13, 2009 at PLWC.

GOD With Us

Reading: Isaiah 7:1-14; Matthew 1:18-23

No sermon for last week since Carey and I were away visiting family for Thanksgiving. This week, however, we're starting our series for Advent focusing on God With Us, one of the titles given to Jesus.

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Preached on December 6, 2009 at PLWC.

Making Sense of the Senseless

Reading: John 18:33-37; Revelation 1:4b-8

This Sunday was Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday in the Christian calendar, meaning that we end our year by proclaiming that Jesus Christ is the King of all things. We celebrated at PLWC with a communion service.

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Preached on November 22, 2009 at PLWC.

The End

Reading: 1 Peter 1:3-9; 2:4-12

1 Peter is one of those books that I keep coming around to because I'm continually intrigued by it. This week we looked at one of Peter's assumptions underlying his message in this book. Since our main focus in on glorifying God, he says, we are free to do a lot of things that might be counter-intuitive otherwise.

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Preached on November 15, 2009 at PLWC.

One Thing We Know

Reading: Hebrews 9:24-28; 2 Peter 3:1-15a

This week's sermon focused on the Parousia, which is a fifty-cent theological term that basically refers to the return of Christ. It's always fun strolling along these tightropes...

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Preached on November 8, 2009 at PLWC.

Two Sermons: "The Word of God For/To the People of God" and "Pass It On"

We had a special speaker with us on October 27, so I owe you two sermons for the last three Sundays. The first sermon comes from the difficult book of Hebrews and explores the call of Jesus our High Priest, and the second comes out of the wonderful little book of Ruth.

"The Word of God For/To the People of God"
Preached on October 18, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Hebrews 4:14-5:10
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

"Pass It On"
Preached on November 1, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Ruth 1:1-18, 4:13-22
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Also, I've updated our discussion of spiritual gifts to include the gifts we covered during those two weeks: the gifts of faith, discernment, teaching, leadership, and miracles. Click here to view Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus, or click here to read the blog post introducing it.

The Beating Heart

Reading: Psalm 25; Psalm 26

I was out backpacking last week, so this sermon is actually a couple of Sundays old. We followed up our journey through the book of James with a sermon rooted in the Psalms because worship is what we were made for, and it is the beating heart of our life in Christ.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Also, I've updated our discussion of spiritual gifts to include the gift we covered this week: the gift of healing. Click here to view Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus, or click here to read the blog post introducing it.

Preached on October 4, 2009 at PLWC.

Strange Wisdom

Reading: Mark 2:1-12; James 5:13-20

This week's sermon is our last on the book of James for now. If you're familiar with James you'll know that the last section includes the verses about prayer and anointing for healing, so our sermon was focused on leading into a service of prayer and healing. That in turn led into a service of communion, so the sermon for this week looks a little disjointed because it was designed for this particular service.

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Preached on September 27, 2009 at PLWC.

The Ancient Science

Reading: Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

We've come to our fourth and next-to-last sermon on the book of James. This week we are seeing a reminder of the contrast between wisdom and folly. There really are two very different paths we can walk, and either one requires a choice.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Also, I've updated our discussion of spiritual gifts to include the gifts we covered this week: the gift of a word of wisdom and a word of knowledge. Click here to view Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus, or click here to read the blog post introducing it.

Preached on September 20, 2009 at PLWC.

From Assyria to Rome

We recently finished studying the book of Daniel in our Sunday evening Bible study. Daniel is a book that covers a lot of history in a roundabout way, and much of that history is probably unknown to a lot of Christians. The Old Testament story ends with the Jews returning from exile under Persian rule, but then when you get to the New Testament the Romans are in charge. Daniel's prophecies have a lot to do with that in-between time, a period of about four centuries I've often heard called the "400 Years of Silence," which is a completely ridiculous name. A lot happened in those 400 years, and there's a growing realization these days that many of the events in those 400 years were direct causes for what the world was like in Jesus' time.

In other words, those centuries we neatly skip over were very important, almost as though we were to study American history and just skip the period of 1850-1875.

At any rate, I put together a very general timeline as a visual aid to help people see some of the flow of the events leading up to and following the Babylonian exile. No, I didn't get every single important date on there, and yes, some scholars might argue that some dates should be nudged a year or two one way or the other, but the point is to give people a general idea of how things happened, broadly speaking, during those very important years.

Click here to view this timeline (.pdf).

Something We Already Know

Reading: Proverbs 8:1-13; James 3:1-12

We're continuing through James, and this week we came to the famous passage about tongues (the tongue in your mouth, not the gift of tongues). He's telling us what we already know, but, like a swift kick in the butt, sometimes that's exactly what we need.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Also, I've updated our discussion of spiritual gifts to include the gifts we covered this week: the gifts of tongues (spiritual tongues, not the one in your mouth) and interpretation of tongues. Click here to view Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus, or click here to read the blog post introducing it.

Preached on September 13, 2009 at PLWC.

Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus

The topic of Spiritual gifts is one fraught with bugaboos. One the one hand, there are those who misuse and misconstrue the gifts to the point that they focus on them to the exclusion of the richness of the gospel. On the other hand, there are those who seize up at the merest mention of the gifts, because we certainly wouldn't want to admit that there might be a part of our religion that is out of our control or, God forbid, not respectable. There are many other hands in between these two hands, of course, and so many Christians simply throw all those hands in the air and ignore the entire topic in frustration.

My thinking on the gifts is that one sermon or one Sunday school class simply is not enough to do it justice. It is not enough to talk about the topic broadly, yet examining each gift in detail would be cumbersome to do all at once. We are therefore spending several minutes each Sunday over the course of a couple of months to talk about one or two gifts at a time, with the goal being that we will all understand them better, recognize them in ourselves or others, and put them to better use for the service of God's kingdom.

I have chosen Reversal as our overarching theme. Part of some people's consternation -- mine, at least, if no one else's -- has been that these gifts seem rather random. We can't deny the biblical truth of them, but why are they really there? They're a bit weird and unpredictable, so why does God expect us to bother with them? Part of the explanation, I think, is that these gifts represent a reversal of the effects of sin; that is, they are glimpses or foreshadows of what life will be like in God's consummated kingdom, and they therefore also represent a reversal of sorts to what life was like before the fall of humanity. I have no idea if anyone else has ever interpreted the gifts in this way, nor am I going to insist that this is strictly grounded in the Bible, but I do find it a helpful way of thinking of the gifts as a whole.

I will add a gift or two each week, and it's worth noting that these are effectively ripped out of their context in our worship services, so there may be some abrupt transitions here and there. Also, as a guide for my own thinking I have been using The New Testament Gifts of the Holy Spirit by Dr. Kenneth Cain Kinghorn, a former member of the faculty at Asbury Seminary. It is one of the more practical and well-balanced treatments of the gifts that I have seen, and I am indebted to him for it.

Click here to view Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus.

Four Sermons: "Some Wiggle Room, Please," "Stand Fearlessly," "Debating Wisdom," and "Favorites"

Well, I think this may be a record. I'm four sermons behind, and I apologize. Part of my procrastination came from a parallel series we're doing; we've been taking a few minutes in each worship service to focus on a few spiritual gifts so we can better recognize them and put them into action, and I haven't yet gotten those mini-sermons formatted to the point that I can post them. They'll be posted in the next few days, though.

In the last month we finished hearing the words of Ephesians and began reading from the book of James.

"Some Wiggle Room, Please"
Preached on August 16, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Ephesians 5:8-20
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

"Stand Fearlessly"
Preached on August 23, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Ephesians 6:10-20
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

"Debating Wisdom"
Preached on August 30, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Proverbs 1:20-33; James 1:17-27
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

"Favorites"
Preached on September 6, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Deuteronomy 10:12-22; James 2:1-17
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Different Bodies

Reading: Ephesians 4:17-5:2

We're getting to the point in Ephesians when Paul shifts from his theological discourse to his ethical instructions, though the two parts are by no means separate. Some of his instructions here are oft-quoted, but we just as often miss the direction he is going with them.

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Preached on August 9, 2009 at PLWC.

Growing Up

Reading: John 6:24-35; Ephesians 4:1-16

This week we read one of the New Testament texts that lists a few of the classic spiritual gifts. Paul's exhortations to the Ephesians will be the launching point for us to explore the spiritual gifts in depth over the next several weeks (if not more), because Paul makes it clear that the point of the gifts is to grow us to maturity. In other words, not putting these things into action means that we're immature Christians.

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Preached on August 2, 2009 at PLWC.

Immeasurably More

Reading: John 6:1-21; Ephesians 3:14-21

This week we looked at the central message of the book of Ephesians: God has done something through Christ that nobody expected or even really thought possible. The point for us today is that we should never underestimate him.

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Preached on July 26, 2009 at PLWC.

Tearing Down Walls and Building Up Houses

Reading: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Matthew 27:50-51; Ephesians 2:11-22

Carey and I have been on vacation, thus explaining the lack of a sermon last week. This week, however, we moved on from 2 Corinthians and began reading Ephesians. I suspect I could spend several weeks at least preaching from this passage from Ephesians 2; Paul really likes to pack his words with theology.

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Preached on July 19, 2009 at PLWC.

How to Live through a Recession

Reading: Luke 12:22-34; 2 Corinthians 8:1-15

This is our last sermon focusing on 2 Corinthians before we move on to something else. We looked at Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians to give generously; it's always good to revisit how God's generosity to us forms the foundation of our generosity toward others.

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Preached on July 5, 2009 at PLWC.

What's Missing

Reading: Mark 6:1-13; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Our third sermon based in 2 Corinthians deals with Paul's thorn in the flesh. Like Jesus' sending out of his followers two by two without money, food, or extra clothes, Paul's statements are a reminder to us of how much the gospel requires of us.

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Preached on June 28, 2009 at PLWC.

Slugs, Ties, and God

Reading: Mark 4:35-41; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Paul spends quite a bit of time in 2 Corinthians defending himself from a host of accusations made by the lovely people of Corinth. We might find his defense tactics somewhat surprising, though.

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Preached on June 21, 2009 at PLWC.

A Sanctified Soap Opera

Reading: Mark 4:26-34; 2 Corinthians 5:6-21

The lectionary will be taking us through 2 Corinthians for the next few weeks, which I'm personally looking forward to since I haven't looked much at 2 Corinthians for a while. This week we dealt with Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians to be reconciled to God and then to be ministers of that reconciliation.

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Preached on June 14, 2009 at PLWC.

All your Trinity questions answered

That title might be too optimistic. Still, I'm posting a link to a series of lessons I put together a while back for our prayer meeting to help people have a better understanding of the Trinity. The intent was to have three weeks of lessons (hence the breakdown into three parts), but I think it ended up taking six weeks, which is not nearly as appropriate for a series on the Trinity. I thought, since our last sermon dealt with the Trinity, it might be helpful to have a slightly more analytical look -- is that a good idea? -- at the topic. I think the prayer was a better way of handling it, honestly, but I suppose this also serves a purpose.

Click here to view this lesson series.

I'll post the June 14 sermon later this week.

Prayer to the Trinity

Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-17; Romans 8:12-17

Preaching about the Trinity is hard, frankly. How can we do justice to one of the most profound revelations of God in one brief sermon? We can't. But we can point ourselves toward the beautiful mystery and ask God to reveal himself to us. This last Sunday was Trinity Sunday, the first time I can remember celebrating it and the first time I have tried to preach specifically on the Trinity.

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Preached on June 7, 2009 at PLWC.

What Is Truth?

Reading: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; 1 John 5:9-13, 20

Sometimes it's a lot of work translating the Bible into our language. It's more than an issue of it being written in a different language; sometimes there are cultural forces at work as well. This week we looked at one of those things that takes some extra translation: "truth" in the Bible isn't always the same thing as what we might assume.

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Preached on May 24, 2009 at PLWC.

Redefining Terms

Reading: John 15:9-17; 1 John 5:1-6

We're continuing through 1 John, sort of a meat-and-potatoes book that fills you up without wasting time with any fluff. This week we're looking at why John thought it was so important that his readers accept that Jesus was God's Messiah in the flesh.

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Preached on May 17, 2009 at PLWC.

On Grandma's Lap

Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:31b-13:13; 1 John 4:7-21

We continued in 1 John this week in a passage that sounds an awful lot like last week's. That's not a bad thing, though -- some things are worth repeating.

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Preached on May 10, 2009 at PLWC.

Gift and Giver

Reading: Ezekiel 36:22-27; 1 John 3:14-24

There was no sermon for last week since we had a special speaker visiting. This week, however, we're reading from 1 John about the presence of the Holy Spirit as God's gift to us.

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Preached on May 3, 2009 at PLWC.

Believe it or not, sometimes we miss the point.

Carey and I watched The Shoes of the Fisherman the other week. It's a movie about (spoilers ahead, if it's possible to have spoilers for a 41-year-old movie) a Russian archbishop who is elected pope during a time of extreme famine in China. The Chinese get increasingly belligerent, the Soviet and American superpowers get edgy, and everybody's trigger finger gets itchy. The movie ends with the new pope's coronation, during which the pope announces that he is selling all the lands and resources and artwork owned by the Catholic church to be used for the relief of the Chinese people, even if it means bankrupting the church. Problem solved.

I had watched this movie some years ago with my Dad, and when we got to the end of the movie I asked him if this was based on a true story. I was more than a little disappointed to find out that it is not. No such thing has ever happened, to the great shame of every Christian.

Part of what disturbs me is that The Shoes of the Fisherman is not a particularly Christian movie; it was directed by a not-especially-Christian director and distributed by MGM, and yet it gets the point of our religion better than most Christians seem to. Or take another example: this article from The Onion (note that I'm not endorsing The Onion, hilarious though it can be -- it's got occasional vulgar and offensive content, so consider yourself warned). The Onion is very definitely not Christian, and yet in their sarcasm they show that they have a pretty good idea of what a Christian should be.

So why are we surprised that the church in the US is struggling? If we spend more time and energy drawing up petitions about things we're against than we do, say, feeding the hungry,* does our church really deserve to live? Maybe we should try listening to some atheists and secularists, rather than yelling at sinners to do what we want them to do.

Oh, now I've done it...

*Note: I'm pretty sure Jesus had a lot more to say about taking care of the poor than he did about keeping evolution out of textbooks...

A New Old World

Reading: 1 John 1:1-2:2

Last Sunday was the Sunday after Easter, so we used the bulk of our morning worship for reading and responding to the nine passages telling of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances to his disciples. Therefore the words of the Gospel were our sermon, or most of it, and the actual sermon I preached was fairly short.

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Preached on April 19, 2009 at PLWC.

Holy Week Sermons: "The Hospitality of God" and "On The Move"

Last week being Holy Week, things ran a little differently than normal for us. We held a Maundy Thursday communion service this year in place of our normal midweek prayer meeting, so the first sermon below was written for that service. The second sermon below was our Easter Sunday sermon, dealing with the apparently open-ended way Mark ends his account of the resurrection.

"The Hospitality of God"
Reading: Mark 14:12-31
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.
Preached on April 9, 2009 (Maundy Thursday) at PLWC.

"On The Move"
Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16:1-8
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.
Preached on April 12, 2009 (Easter Sunday) at PLWC.

Engage: Confrontation

Reading: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Mark 11:1-11

This is the last sermon in our "Engage" series. This last Sunday was, of course, Palm Sunday, and so we wrapped up our discussion of how to engage our faith and actions by seeing how Jesus chose to confront the authorities of the world. Hopefully we're not too surprised to find out that for the time being, at least, confrontation must be a part of living in God's kingdom.

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Preached on April 5, 2009 at PLWC.

Engage: Healing

Reading: Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

This is the fourth installment of our "Engage" series for Lent. This week we saw that Jesus viewed himself as being God's means to offer healing to a perishing world, and that healing involves much more than simply healing one's physical ailments.

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Preached on March 29, 2009 at PLWC.

Engage: Transformation

Reading: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Mark 8:31-38

"Transformation" is our code word for "holiness" for this sermon. As we continue on through Lent, learning who Jesus was and why he went to the cross, we are narrowing the focus of our engagement of our faith and actions. This week it's personal: our faith in Christ should truly transform us over time into people who are more and more marked by his cross.

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Preached on March 22, 2009 at PLWC.

Engage: Worship

Reading: Exodus 20:1-17; John 2:13-22

This is the second sermon in our "Engage" series for Lent. Since Lent is a time of self-examination, we're focusing on ways we can engage our faith with our actions. This week we looked at engaging more directly with God through worship.

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Preached on March 15, 2009 at PLWC.

Engage: Others

Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33

Technically we're starting Lent a week late at PLWC, but we had some missionaries with us last week. Our Lent will be focused on engaging our faith with our actions if a variety of ways, and we're beginning by focusing on engaging with other people. The plan is to pray for and hopefully invite people to join us either for our week of prayer during Holy Week or for our Easter services.

Also, the sermon worked a little differently this time around. The introductory part of the sermon came earlier in the worship service than normal, so if, while you're reading, you think I was being particularly long-winded, try to think of it as 25% more sermon for free.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Preached on March 8, 2009 at PLWC.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

I'm more than a week late posting this sermon, but since I didn't preach last Sunday this should catch us up. We celebrated communion together a couple of Sundays ago on what was the last Sunday of Epiphany as well as the last Sunday before Lent. We read the story of the Transfiguration and reflected once again on the revelation of God, though this time we saw that revelation before us in the Lord's Supper.

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Preached on February 22, 2009.

One Reason

Reading: Psalm 30; 2 Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1:40-45

Our readings for this week had to do with lepers and how they were healed, but we saw that they were healed from more than just their disease.

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Preached on February 15, 2009 at PLWC.

Choosing Our Words

Reading: 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

It's been a few weeks since I've posted because I haven't preached in that time. Things are back to normal now, though, or as normal as they ever get in a parsonage. I'm hoping to post some more content later this week to make up for the recent lack, so check back in a few days. In the meantime, our sermon last Sunday continued along the theme of Epiphany, during which we learn about the revealing of Jesus.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Preached on February 8, 2009 at PLWC.

Drowsy Eyes, Cement Eyes

Reading: Psalm 139; 1 Samuel 3:1-10; John 1:43-51

Since we're in the season of Epiphany, which celebrates the revealing of Christ, we're continuing on an unofficial theme of what it means to truly see in God's kingdom.

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Preached on January 18, 2009 at PLWC.

Two Sermons: "Flying Monkeys and Over the Rainbow" and "Seeing Voices"

This time I actually have a decent excuse for the lack of updates: my hard drive crashed last week and Carey's computer has also been giving me some lip, so posting sermons has been kind of a low priority in the midst of the crashing and the backtalk. And, though I have a hard copy of it, the electronic copy of my Christmas Eve homily went down to the grave with my hard drive, so I'll just skip that one for now. For those of you itching to have a complete collection of my sermons, I apologize. You'll just have to wait for them to be published, which probably won't be for a long, long time.

"Flying Monkeys and Over the Rainbow"
Preached on January 4, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Psalm 147:12-20; Jeremiah 31:7-14
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

"Seeing Voices"
Preached on January 11, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Psalm 29; Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.