Sermons (Page 101)
Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
As humans, we love a good story. When we meet someone new we might say, “tell me your story.” We like to discuss the storyline of that new show. We bathe our children in stories about our family, our nation, and our religion. Even Jesus told a variety of stories…
Third Sunday After Pentecost
There is this quote that I often see, in various forms, that circulates every so often around the internet. It is “A lie can travel half-way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” This quote has been attributed to various people: Mark Twain, Winston Churchill among others. But the original person was Charles Spurgeon in 1859. Now 1859, can you believe that? That is 150 years ago. 150 years! It seems like this quote could easily describe our present time, right? Although we have this new modern term for lie we would use today: fake news. So a modern upgrade to this quote would be “Fake news can travel half-way around the world while the truth is still composing the first letter of a tweet.”…
Second Sunday After Pentecost
The word “sabbath” is central in today’s readings. It’s a word that drips with religiosity and is rarely used elsewhere. In fact, most religions have some kind of “day of rest,” even if they don’t describe it as a sabbath. The essence of a sabbath is to have one day a week to abstain from work focused on benefits for the individual. In the Hebrew Scriptures, or the Old Testament, we learn that over time the Israelites defined what was considered inappropriate on the Sabbath – including things like cooking, trading, plowing and reaping, gathering wood, and loading animals…