July 2026 – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

The Kingdom of Heaven is Like…..

Matthew 13:31-52 More than two decades ago when I was going through the process of ordination to ministry, our denomination was going through a process of its own. At that time, there was a lot of conflict, competing forces wanting to shape the way the church would look, feel, and move in the world going forward. It was mostly about whether or not the church would fully embrace our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. We were in the thick of this controversy when I went before the presbytery as a candidate for ministry to be examined. In this process, all the ministers of the presbytery were free to ask me any questions they wanted that in any way pertained to my faith. The first person who rose to ask a question wanted to know what I thought about salvation. He began by saying that he knew the idea of universal salvation […]

Entitlement

Genesis 25:19-34 Matthew 13:1-9 When we were little, my older sister and I convinced our younger sister that her duty as the youngest child was to wait on us; run down to the kitchen and get us a snack if we were hungry, even run down to the 7-Eleven if we had a sudden craving for Doritos or Laffy-Taffy. We had our moments when we were bad, I am ashamed to say. Older siblings often dominate the younger ones because they’re bigger, smarter, stronger – at least for a while. But sometimes even when things even out; when the younger siblings are as big and strong and smart as the older siblings they still let themselves be dominated, simply because they are used to it. It’s the way things have always been. If you ever see a younger sibling gain any advantage over the older sibling, it’s probably because they carefully watched […]

The Kingdom is Near

July 7, 2026
by Maggie Gillespie

Luke 10:1-11 This week, I remembered a sermon I listened to a few years back. The preacher talked about hiking in the redwoods of California with his wife. It was a peaceful experience; it felt like nothing else mattered but just being there in that moment. When it was time to leave, they got in their car to drive home. They turned on the radio and heard the news of the day: a mass shooting. War in Ukraine. Leaks about Supreme Court decisions. Toxic politics in primaries of one state after another. And just like that, their peace was gone. As soon as they reentered the world, their peace evaporated, and they wondered if what they had been feeling was really peace at all. Or maybe just an illusion. Do you ever feel that way? That the only way to find a moment of peace is to escape from the […]

The Anatomy of Hope, Week 4: Hands

Hebrews 10:23-25 Genesis 22:1-14 There are some stories that you don’t really want to know. Like William Styron’s story, Sophie’s Choice. Sophie was a Polish woman during the Second World War. She was sent to Auschwitz with her young son and daughter. The defining moment in this story is one of Sophie and her children, standing in line with all the other prisoners, waiting to be processed when a German officer approaches her. He offers Sophie a choice: which one of your children should die? Choose or they will both be taken. She chose her daughter. Then there is Toni Morrison’s story, Beloved. The character Sethe is a runaway slave living in Cincinnati with her four children. When the master hunts her down, Sethe grabs her children and runs to the toolshed. She knows she would rather they not live than to see them returned to slavery and so she […]

The Anatomy of Hope, Week 3: Eyes

Genesis 21:8-21 1 Peter 1:3-9 You might not know much about Hagar, because the story of Genesis doesn’t make her a main character. Although I would argue she ought to be. Hagar is first introduced in Chapter 16 of Genesis. Years have already passed since God first called Abraham on this journey, making promises about descendants that would surpass the number of stars in the sky. Yet even now Sarah remains childless. God occasionally returns to reiterate the promise to Abraham, but nothing happens. And so, not terribly surprising to anyone, Sarah decides to take action. Hagar is a woman who is enslaved to her. She is Egyptian, presumably young and healthy, so Sarah decides she will take a chance on her. In those times, men often took more than one wife – for the sake of being fruitful and multiplying. And a woman who held another woman enslaved, could […]