Worship
Sermon: Fourth Sunday of Easter 2012
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 29, 2012
Text: John 10:11-18; Psalm 23
The theme for today’s sermon is worry. And I want to emphasize up front that everyone has to cope with stress, worry and anxiety. And I want to be clear that there is a difference between the stress and anxiety that we all have and a medical condition that needs to be treated with medication. As a pastor, I do believe there is a wholesome role that anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication can play, when necessary. We need to avoid both extremes. The one extreme is that Christians should never need to take pills. We should just be able to pray ourselves into health. That is one extreme. But the other extreme is that pills are the answer to everything. Better living through psychopharmacology. Maybe you can’t always pray yourself into health, but you can’t tranquilize yourself into health either. If you feel like your life is being taken over by worry or anxiety or sadness, you should probably make two phone calls. One to your pastor. And the other one to your doctor. So that’s my disclaimer. Having said that, I want to talk about the spiritual element of worry.
When I was a pastor in Pittsburgh, one of my shut-ins had a cross-stitch of Psalm 23 on her living room wall that her mother had made for her. And every time I would visit her, I’d take her Holy Communion and then we’d look at that cross-stitch and pray aloud together Psalm 23. Every month for seven years, she and prayed that psalm together. Then when I took a call and left Pittsburgh, she gave me that cross-stitch and it’s hanging in my house right now. Psalm 23 is the most beloved passages of the Bible. We say it at every funeral. These are some of the most comforting words ever written.
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall lack nothing.
Can we agree that worry is a problem for everyone? Worrying about finances – especially in these uncertain times, with food and gas prices rising. We worry about tomorrow. We worry about our health. What will the test results show?
Sermon: Fifth Sunday of Easter 2012
Last Updated on Thursday, 10 May 2012 12:33
Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 6, 2012
Text: John 15:1-8
When you think about it, we are dependent on so many people from day to day. We trust them to do their jobs so that we can live safe and happy lives. When we go out to eat we trust that the chef is providing good fresh food. We know there are times when this has not happened and people have become terribly sick.
Mike, a helicopter pilot was home on leave from the navy and over dinner was telling his father all about the choppers he flew often in very dangerous conditions far out at sea. He concluded by saying that his life and those of the crew depended on one bolt – the bolt that held the huge whirling rotor in place. The mechanics had named this the ‘jesus’ bolt. You can see why. Without the ‘jesus’ bolt they would be doomed. Their safe return home depended entirely on this one bolt.
That is a modern example of what Jesus is telling us in the reading from John’s Gospel today when he says, "I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.” You don’t have to know too much about gardening and plants to realize that a tree, shrub or any plant as far as that goes, depends on the trunk or the stem and the root system for it to be happy and healthy.
Sermon: Second Sunday in Lent
Second Sunday in Lent
March 4, 2012
Text: Mark 8:27-38
There is an organization called Teach America. And its objective is to recruit this nation’s most talented college graduates to go into some of the nation’s worst public schools. A well-known writer named William Willimon used to be the university chaplain at Ivy League Duke University and he recounts that one day, several years ago, a representative from Teach America came to his campus to speak to a room full of juniors and seniors.
This woman stood up in front of a large group of students – a larger group than you might suppose would come out to this sort of thing – and said to them, “I can tell by looking at you that I have probably come to the wrong place. Somebody told me this was a BMW campus and I can believe it looking at you. Just looking at you,” she said, “I can tell that all of you are a success. Why would you all be on this campus if you were not successful, if you were not going on to successful careers on Madison Avenue or Wall Street?
Sermon: First Sunday in Lent 2012
First Sunday in Lent
March 13, 2011
Text: Matthew 4:1-11
I want you to know today that I have a confession to make. There I was, standing in the room full of people. Everyone was talking. No one was looking at me. On the tables next to me were at least 2 or 3 hundred tons of cookies, cupcakes, home-made candies, and F-U-D-G-E. There was fruit too, but who needs fruit. On one table I even saw a fountain gushing liquid chocolate. It was a wedding reception and I was struggling with temptation. One of my all-time biggest weaknesses is chocolate fudge. I’m a fool for the stuff. I’ll embarrass myself publicly for the sake of chocolate.
Sermon: Ash Wednesday 2012
Ash Wednesday 2012
Text: Luke 3:1-20
Title: Repentance
Today is Ash Wednesday and is the beginning of the somber penitential season of Lent. Each Wednesday for the next month and a half, I will be preaching a sermon series on The Vocabulary of the Faith. Each week, I want to take an important word from the Bible, a word that represents an important concept or central teaching of Christianity, and try to unfold it.
Tonight, I want to talk about repentance. It means so much more than just saying one is sorry. The Greek word we translate repentance, metanoia, literally means to have a change of your mind. It is impossible to repent and still remain indifferent about your sins. It refers to an about-face, a change of mind that leads to a change in direction or behavioral pattern.
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