April 2026 – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

With Glad and Generous Hearts

Acts 2:42-47 John 10:1-10 The book of Acts is really special to me because it is the only book in the Bible that tries to give us a glimpse of just how it all began. It says to the reader, come along with me and I’ll show you what it was like, how this great thing we call the church got started. As I read it, I feel like I can hear the narrator saying, “Man, wasn’t that a time!” Day by day, wonderful things were happening in their midst. This reading from the second chapter is in the very beginning of the beginning. The resurrected Jesus has ascended, the Holy Spirit has descended, and the church is alive. Peter preaches a sermon that everyone understood in their own language – and I take that to mean simply that the Spirit was breaking through all the barriers. People were hearing […]

Straight From the Heart

Luke24:13-35 The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a beautiful line: Christ plays in ten thousand places. And it seems to be so in the Easter season. In these days following the resurrection, it seems like he is everywhere at once. Better than when he was bound by human flesh! He is in the garden, in the upper room, at the lakeshore, on the road to Emmaus. Apparently, all at once. Here we are still in the same day we were in two weeks ago. For you and me, the Easter lilies are starting to die back, and the jellybeans are all eaten. But the gospel still has us on the day of Christ’s resurrection. One of the things that happened on this day was a couple of the disciples walking to a place called Emmaus. I wish I could tell you something about this place called Emmaus. I have done […]

Full of Gladness

Acts 2:14a, 22-32 John 20:19-31 There is a cute scene in the middle of The Sound of Music, when Maria and Georg first express their love for each other. They are sharing their memories of the moment when they each knew they loved the other one. When I was little, I thought it was embarrassing, but as an adult I think it is my favorite scene. Don’t we just love to remember exactly when something good first began? The moment I knew I loved you. The moment I knew I wanted to be a mother, or a father. The moment our friendship began. These are moments that stick in our memory and we visit them now and then, for the pleasure of them. The moment when we experienced the beginning of a new thing – a life-changing thing. Occasionally, the new thing is really big, bigger than a personal relationship […]

Love is Our Religion

Matthew 28:1-10 Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed. Powerful words we say to one another on Easter morning. But only powerful because we know the story behind it – a story that gives meaning to everything. The particular story of this day is the one about the women who came to the tomb early. They came to tend the body of their beloved, but it was gone. The tomb was empty. Angels appeared and said to the women, “He is risen; you will see him again in Galilee, the place where it all began.” It goes back to Galilee, where his ministry began. But there is much more to it than that, isn’t there? It goes back to Bethlehem, where he was born – this child called Immanuel, God with us. Because God so loved the world. It goes back to Bethlehem. But it goes back much further, doesn’t […]

The Other Way

Matthew 21:1-11 We wrapped up our Bible study for the season last Wednesday. We made it all the way through the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi. It really felt like an accomplishment. I kind of wished I had special t-shirts to hand out, saying something like “I Survived the Old Testament Bible Study.” In our last session we spent some time in the later prophets, those with a very far ranging vision – those prophets who speak of God’s ultimate intention for the world. One of these is Zechariah, who gets an honorable mention today. These visionary prophets were living and writing during a time when it seemed like something big was afoot, cosmic shifts were imminent. These were the centuries just before Jesus was born. I think it must have felt like the world was about to change. It was. Most people, though, had no idea why – […]