Year B - Second Sunday after Christmas Day
When I was in seminary, one of the rites of passage was your “middler sermon.” Second year students were called middlers and sometime during the year you preached in chapel and then had your sermon critiqued. It was both exhilarating and terrifying to preach before your friends, professors, and any visitors who were on campus. […]
Read MoreYear B - First Sunday After Christmas
I met him while I was doing my last-minute Christmas shopping and as we were standing in the checkout line. His face seemed so welcoming and friendly that I decided to strike up a conversation. Right away I discovered that he didn’t know English very well. He struggled to come up with the words and […]
Read MoreYear B: Christmas Day
At what point during this season filled with all the glitter and wrappings, the frantic shopping, the non-stop Christmas radio stations blaring “Jingle Bell Rock” and “All I Want for Christmas is You” – did the humble and beckoning Christ finally break through to you? At what point did you finally say—enough of the plastic, […]
Read MoreYear B - Fourth Sunday in Advent
Let’s face it. When it comes to genealogies there is nothing more interesting than tracing your own and nothing more boring than having to listen to someone else’s. Of course, for many years, to be welcomed into certain social circles, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution or the Mayflower Society, one had to […]
Read MoreYear B - Third Sunday in Advent
“But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first” (Matthew 19:30, 20:16; Mark 10:31 and Luke 13:30). We all are aware of this individual saying of Jesus, but he reiterated this theme throughout his ministry more often than just the few times the saying is recorded in the […]
Read MoreYear B - The Second Sunday in Advent
How long, O Lord? How long do we have to endure the “new normal?” How much more can we endure the delay until a long-awaited messenger brings us the news that our season of anxiety and fear is over? Our patience is growing thin. Certainly, the antidote, the solution, the remedy is out there! How beautiful […]
Read MoreYear B - First Sunday of Advent
Let’s start with the good news. This is the first Sunday in the Season of Advent and thus, it marks the beginning of the new church year. Happy New Year! I’ll bet that most of us are more than willing to see 2020 go. Church life has been disrupted since March. Some churches have scrambled […]
Read MoreYear B - First Sunday of Advent - November 29b, 2020
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— 2as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3When you did awesome deeds that we did […]
Read MoreYear A - Reign of Christ - Proper 29 (34)
31“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33and he will put the sheep at […]
Read MoreYear A Proper 28 (33)
Matthew 25:14-3014 For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; 15to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16The one who had received the five talents went off at once and […]
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