Category: Sermons 2026

Ephesians 5:8-14 John 9:1-41  [Note about the text: There are many players in this story of Jesus healing the young man with blindness, and it should be noted that all of them are Jews. This is important because at one point in the story we are told that the young man’s parents are “afraid of the Jews.”  When John writes this he is speaking to the church that existed decades later, at the time he was writing. Many years after Jesus was crucified, his disciples were expelled from their Jewish community, which was very painful for them. From that perspective, this is a story about the pain of feeling excluded, perhaps the pain of being unseen.] I don’t know if it is accurate to call this the story of Jesus healing a blind man. Maybe it should be called a story about all the ways people take issue with Jesus […]

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John 4:5-42 We are in the third week of our Lenten journey now, and I am thinking about the ways in which journeys to new places may change us. In my morning devotions last week I encountered some questions pertaining to this. How does what you encounter today affect your actions today, and tomorrow? How do the experiences you have now change the way you will be later? Questions such as these seem to get at the bigger question of whether, and how, you will be open to a new thing when it is presented to you. To the extent that we can afford to, many of us attempt to travel in a way that will be as unchallenging as possible. In many ways, we try to take home with us when we go away, to keep it as familiar and comfortable as we can. But then are we able […]

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Genesis 12:1-4 John 3:1-17 All of us have moments when we do impulsive things. Like, when your friend says, “Let’s go out for ice cream!” and you weren’t planning to do that, you were actually planning to go home and do laundry, but then you thought, “Ice cream? Why not? You only live once, right?” We have all done something impulsive once in a while. But probably not leaving your home and walking off toward an unknown destination. I’ll bet you haven’t done that. I wonder what Abram thought when God called him to walk away from his home and his people and go to a place God would show him.  There must have been something – or a few things – on his mind. But we don’t know.  The text doesn’t say.  It just says that Abram went, as the Lord told him. I try to imagine why. Maybe […]

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Matthew 4:1-11 Lent began four days ago on Ash Wednesday. We gathered together to remember our sin and our mortality and received ashes. I said the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. And people thanked me for saying so, which always feels a little funny to me. But I do the same. When I receive the ashes smeared on my forehead in the shape of a cross, and hear these words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” I say, “thank you.” Maybe it’s because we already know it deep within us, and it feels right to hear the truth spoken out loud every once in a while. We are small in the large scheme of things. A small speck of dust in a vast wilderness. We need to find a power greater than our own to navigate this journey. The Israelites […]

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Matthew 5:21-37 When I was a young child I loved the TV show Romper Room. Miss Delores or Miss Marjorie or Miss Nancy, or some other Miss, would sing a little song about two bees, a Do-Bee and a Don’t-Bee, to teach lessons about good behavior. “I always do what’s right; I never do anything wrong. I’m a Romper Room Do-Bee, a Do-Bee all day long.” I was all on board with this, being a Do-Bee. Romper Room Lady had all my attention, my complete loyalty. My grandmother would tease me about this, though. She would sing, “I always do what’s wrong; I never do anything right.” And I always reacted the same way, utterly scandalized that she would mock the idea of the Do-Bee. She would just laugh, tickled pink. It never got old – poking at my little four-year-old prissiness. I just thought it was important to be […]

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Matthew 5:13-20 One of my favorite films of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life. We never used to call it by the title, though. In our home when the kids were young, it was just “George Bailey.” We watched it so many times, we knew it so well, you could just stick the VHS tape in the player and let it play from wherever it was stopped the last time we played it. Kira, as a little girl, liked to do just that. A little George Bailey to unwind at the end of a tough day at kindergarten was just the thing. It didn’t take much to do the trick. George Bailey is a man who has lived a very ordinary life. He’s never been anywhere, never done anything really special. And then one evening he is feeling like whatever luck he had has run out. His life, he […]

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Matthew 5:1-12 During our weekly Bible study we have talked about the fact that some things cannot be explained with words. It tends to come up when we encounter a passage where the words are confusing. We muse about it for a while, and we begin to think that this might be one of those situations that words cannot describe. Still, we try, because words are the best device we have. If you have ever found yourself in a foreign country where you didn’t understand what anyone was saying, and they didn’t understand you, you know how frustrating it is to not have words. You try gestures, pointing, maybe drawing pictures, but nothing works as well as words. We sometimes call ourselves people of the book – both Christians and Jews – because we rely on the words of scripture so completely. What would we do without words? And yet […]

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This morning I picked up a devotional book called, For Such A Time as This, by Hanna Reichel, turned to page 46 and read this bit of verse from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. People turn to God when they are sore bestead; pray for help, ask for peace and bread; seek release from being ill, guilty, and dead; so do they all, all, Christians and heathens. People turn to God when He is sore bestead, find him poor, scorned, without roof and bread, devoured by weakness and sin, near dead: Christians stand by God in God’s grief. God turns to all people when they are sore bestead, feeds their souls and bodies with God’s bread; for Christians and heathens at the cross God meets death: and gives both of them relief. (translated from German by Martin Tel and Hanna Reichel) This week our grief and confusion, our fear and anger are heightened by the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Bonhoeffer […]

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Matthew 4:12-23 This sermon was recorded and released before hearing about the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Such reckless violence and cruel loss of life adds weight to the need for Christians to act boldly. I once had a pastor who loved Taco Bell. It was his go-to. I think their taco supreme and nacho cheese chips were a staple in his diet – that is, until the day he decided to participate in a boycott of Taco Bell. This was back in 2001. There was a nationwide boycott of the restaurant chain in support of migrant farm workers – the ones who pick the tomatoes for the tacos. The concerns included poor working and living conditions and extremely low wages for workers who had very little power to stand up for their rights. Several denominations supported it – the PCUSA, the United Methodist Church, the Disciples of Christ, […]

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John 1:29-42 During these weeks between Epiphany and the start of Lent, we are exploring the gifts of God that keep on giving. Gifts that may not seem like gifts at first glance. Gifts that only God can give. And this week it is the gift of curiosity. My mother liked to talk about how I would drive her crazy when I was young, by always asking, “Why?” I guess, like a lot of children, I just wanted answers. I was very curious. Not terribly adventurous – I was cautious about where I went and what I did. But, you find out, curiosity will sometimes lead you right into great adventures. Think of Moses. Out in the wilderness with the sheep when he sees something unusual in his peripheral vision. It’s a bush that seems to be in flames. Moses was curious; he wanted to know why this was happening, […]

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