Sermons 2023 – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

The One We Are Waiting For

Isaiah 35:1-10 Matthew 11:2-11 People often do like a new thing. Kim and I have recently noticed the presence of a new fast food franchise in our area, which is drawing a lot of attention: Zaxby’s. I’ve never eaten at one, although I have noticed them while traveling. Apparently, they specialize in “chicken fingerz.” I hear they are really good. Every time we have passed the new one in Cambridge we’ve seen a line of cars stretching out on the road. That’s just something humans do. When a new place opens up people have to go there and find out what it’s all about. If there is enough buzz, and if it is really good, the energy might sustain itself, and it becomes like the Rise Up drive-through on Riverside Drive. When we lived in Dayton, Ohio, food trucks were all the rage. A whole culture of food truck connoisseurs […]

The One Who’s Coming

Isaiah 11:1-10 Matthew 3:1-12 I recently read a snippet from an interview with one of our most famous living Bible scholars, John Dominic Crossan. The topic of the Left Behind mania came up – you remember those books that were so popular in the nineties? They promoted the rapture concept, the notion that believers will one day, unexpectedly get scooped up into heaven, leaving behind a world on the verge of chaos. According to the theory, there follows a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, ending with the triumphal return of Jesus to earth. This is the kind of stuff that begs to be made into a movie franchise. We touched on the concept last week, with our first Sunday of Advent texts focusing on the end of the world. Crossan had an interesting take on the rapture mania. He said he thought the obsession about Jesus’ […]

About Time

Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:36-44 It’s a bit quirky that the liturgical calendar which starts today with the first Sunday of Advent, usually begins with some thoughts about the end of things. The end of time, specifically. The end of the world as we know it. There is a human desire to know in advance when that end will come. I think it must be because of some completely irrational idea that we might avoid it. If you know it’s coming maybe you can duck? But, as Jesus says, no one knows. Still, people try to figure it out, as if it were nothing more than a tough riddle. And so it seems like there is always somebody somewhere offering up a prediction about exactly when the world will end. In fact, just this fall there was a prediction that caught a lot of traction. A man from South Africa announced […]

A Different Kind of King

Luke 23:33-43 There are moments when you look around and see some very clear signs that all is not right with the world. Actually, at these moments, that might be an appalling understatement. One might rather say that all is messed up with the world. At times. In our Bible study we saw it this past week as we journeyed through the book of Judges, watching how Israel fell further and further into madness and darkness – maybe hurtling back toward that condition where Genesis begins, when God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep – Before the time when God began creating order out of chaos. We see it again in this story from Luke’s gospel. We have heard this story so many times, haven’t we? Every year during the season of Lent we travel down this road […]

Things That Last

Isaiah 65:17-25 Luke 21:5-19 Recently, a friend described to me how it felt for him when he saw his childhood church building on fire. He was well into adulthood, married, and ordained to ministry. He no longer attended the church he grew up in. He was pastoring a different church in another city. But when he heard that the old church was on fire it shook him to his core. He said to his wife that he wanted to be there. He knew he couldn’t do anything, but he just wanted to bear witness. So he got behind the wheel, his wife in the passenger seat, and he began driving back to his old hometown. As they got close, he could see the flames as they overtook the old building. He told me it was so shocking he almost wrecked the car. He said, “I knew that it was only […]

We Have Some Questions

Job 19:23-27 Luke 20:27-38 I just read a book called The Brief History of the Dead. It takes place in a city that is very much like cities we know. It has cafes and libraries and shops and parks and apartment buildings. There are taxis and delivery trucks, people in cars, people on bikes and skateboards. The city is full of people, all kinds of people doing all kinds of things that people do. New people are arriving all the time, this is how it is in a big city. Everyone has a story to tell about how they got there – every journey different from the others. But one thing they have in common is that they are all surprised to find themselves there. They are all from somewhere else. And when they arrive, each one has to begin their life again in this new place. Some of them find […]

The Blessing and the Woe

Luke 6:20-31 There is a story called Ordinary Grace, written by William Kent Krueger. Some of you may recognize the title, because we read it in our monthly book discussion group several years ago. The story is told from the point of view of a man named Frank looking back on one particular summer in his childhood. It was 1961 in a small town in Minnesota. He was 13 years old, his brother Jake was 9. And in that summer, they confronted death for the first time. It wasn’t as though they knew nothing of death, actually. Their father was a minister, and they had been to plenty of viewings and funerals in their childhood already. But this summer was different. There were four deaths this summer for these young boys: lives taken by tragic accident, by violence, by unknown causes. Four deaths they met at close proximity. All four, […]

Four Prayers that Don’t Work, Part 4: The Prayer of Comparison

Luke 18:9-14 It occurred to me this week that we are living in an age of self-service. When I go to the grocery store I usually head to the self-check line where I scan and bag my own groceries, pay my bill, and then I tell myself, “Thank you for shopping at Acme! Have a good day.” When I pay my bills I don’t receive a letter in the mail, with a return envelope. I keep a note on my calendar to remember when the bill is due, then I go onto the company’s website, login, and submit my payment electronically. I go to the ATM machine to make deposits and to withdraw cash. And the list goes on. And so, in that spirit, it occurred to me that this is a pretty straightforward parable we have today. So obvious that I imagine you can interpret it yourself. […]

Four Prayers that Don’t Work, Pt. 2: The Prayer that You Didn’t Pray

Luke 17:11-19 I experienced a moment of serendipity last week when I found myself confronted with the possibility of joy. It popped up in my morning devotions, where I was reminded of the small, nearly intangible ways we can experience joy. A little later I ran into a friend while out walking and she told me about a book she is reading called, coincidentally, Living Joyously. She said that developing the practice of joyfulness is helping her to persevere through difficult things. Later I was in a group discussion where, again, the topic of joy was raised – but there was some pushback. One of the participants divulged that he rarely experiences joy and doesn’t think he knows how to practice joyful living. Another said we should be careful about not having too much joy, lest it be at the expense of taking the grave matters of life seriously. Reflecting […]

Four Prayers that Don’t Work, Part 1: The Prayer for Enough Faith to Have No Need for Faith

Luke 17:1-10 I once had a conversation with a woman with whom I had certain things in common. She and I were around the same age. We both had children who were young adults, sort of struggling to find their way in life. We both were trying to be the best parents we could be for these adult children, who were not quite adults yet. We were two people feeling a little shipwrecked, trying to find our way on to solid ground. As we were talking she suddenly made a sound of exasperation, threw up her hands, and said, “Life could be so easy! You know, it could all be so easy. Why do they have to make it hard?” I laughed, in part because I found the idea so appealing. Yeah, I thought, it really could be easy. Right? Still, it nagged at me, because I suspected she was […]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Posts navigation