Sermons 2026 – Page 2 – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

The High Way

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 […]

The Wandering Way

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 […]

The Gift of Radical Grace

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 […]

The Gift of Public Witness

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 […]

The Gift of Poetic Challenge

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 […]

God’s Grief

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 […]

The Gift of Bold Action

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, […]

The Gift of Curiosity

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, […]

The Gift of Community

Matthew 3:13-17 The Baptism of the Lord Sunday is a good time for us to remember our baptism, which is something we share with Jesus. He was baptized by John in the Jordan River. John didn’t actually want to baptize Jesus, He protested, “I should be baptized by you! Why are you coming to be baptized by me?” John wasn’t wrong about this. But Jesus was doing something new. With his life, Jesus was writing a story – a story about who we are as human beings. A story about a family knit together by love and faith. A story that began long before he was born and continues long after we are gone. Jesus submitted to John, letting himself be submerged in the river, and when he rose up from the water a voice from the heavens was heard saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I […]

The Gift of Unexpected Gifts

Matthew 2:1-12 I wonder if you all received what you wanted to receive this Christmas. Perhaps you received some surprises. Good surprises, I hope. I have a childhood memory of opening a gift from my mother and being disappointed by it. It wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to be a rude and ungrateful child, but I couldn’t seem to hide my disappointment. She kept watching me and she asked, “Don’t you like it?” I think I said yes, I do, but not very convincingly. I was disappointed in the moment. Later I grew to like the gift very much, and I tried to tell her that often. Although I don’t think it made up for the poor way I received it. Receiving gifts can be fraught with difficulties. Very often there are expectations we have with one another – that the gifts given and received should be approximately […]

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