Archive for 'Sermons'

VII Easter – June 5, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

Last week I got an email message from a retired colleague in Bloomington, Don Jones, who has substituted for me here on several occasions, stating that he was looking forward to attending the farewell festivities planned for next Sunday, but expressing surprise that I had picked the Day of Pentecost to be my last Sunday to preside and preach.

“Ascension Day would have been a lot more appropriate,” Don wrote.

Needless to say, ...

VI Easter – May 29, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I grew up a Methodist, and, as I think I’ve also mentioned before, if I were preaching in a Methodist church, this morning’s sermon would have a title, and the title would be posted in big metal letters on a signboard out front (if we thought we could afford it) and in the bulletin, and the title would be “Is God Into Doing Extreme Makeovers?”

This ...

V Easter – May 22, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

A year or two ago, when I was more active in the science & religion dialogue that the DePauw Spiritual Life Center sponsors on campus than I was this year, I found myself having to answer a challenging question.

It was put to me rather suddenly by one of the young skeptics in the group, someone who clearly had rejected long ago whatever brand of the Christian faith he had grown up ...

IV Easter – May 15, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

What’s all this fuss about shepherds?

We only talk about them in church, anyway, and then it’s pretty much once a year—right?

Is the Twenty-Third Psalm one of our favorite psalms (assuming it is) because it’s encouraging and describes the ideal human condition, or is it one of our favorite psalms because someone taught it to us as a child and it’s familiar?

I can remember seeing the picture of two sheep dogs guarding the ...

III Easter – May 8, 2011 – Year A

So our celebration of Easter continues.

Today’s story from the Gospel according to Luke offers us still more testimony: The Lord is risen indeed!

Two of Jesus’ followers meet a stranger on a road outside Jerusalem.

It is Jesus, but they do not know it is Jesus, and they proceed to tell him everything that is weighing on their hearts: how the one they had hoped would be the Messiah was handed over to the ...

II Easter – May 1, 2011 – Year A

“Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says, breathing upon his disciples. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven…; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

The day of resurrection was not yet over, and already their risen Lord had work for them to do.

The disciples were still reeling from the events of the past three days—the days the Church calls Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Day—trying ...

Easter Day – April 24, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

Easter is the event that nobody expects, nobody is ready for.

Jesus’ resurrection takes everybody by surprise.

We who have come to take the idea more or less for granted cannot begin to imagine how astounded Jesus’ disciples were when they realized that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

Resurrection was something they hadn’t counted on.

The story of the disciples’ experience as we have it in the Gospel according to John proves this ...

Palm Sunday – April 17, 2011 – Year A

Even though a sermon is listed in the bulletin, it isn’t going to be a very long sermon.

In the first place, when there is a sermon, the kids almost always have the option of walking out on it, and that just isn’t possible today.

In the second place, starting the service in the parish hall with the blessing of the palms, processing through the Memorial Garden, then reading aloud the entire account of ...

V Lent – April 10, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

Mortal, can these bones live?”

God’s haunting question greets Ezekiel, as the prophet casts his eyes over a valley of dry bones.

What Ezekiel sees before him is a battlefield covered with the sun-bleached bones of slain warriors.

It may be the site of the final struggle, when Jerusalem was overrun and the people of Judah were carried off to Babylon.

The bones are a reminder of what it means to be a conquered people ...

IV Lent – April 3, 2011 – Year A

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

It may well have been that question, posed by his disciples, that made Jesus decide to break the religious law and heal the blind man on the Sabbath.

It was probably that question.

I won’t go so far as to say that when Jesus heard the question, something snapped, but the answer they got back from him was swift and unequivocal: “Neither ...