Sermons

In the days following the Babylonian Exile, when the people returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the city and the Temple, the scribe Ezra became very distressed that so many of his people, including religious leaders, had married foreign women and had children with them

We’re skipping a lot of time and a lot of material between last week’s reading, the story of Moses’ birth and the women who made his life possible, plus the first part of his call story.

Now and then the textbook would have a sidebar or maybe even part of a chapter about a few women who had some kind of prominent role in a time or an event;

What’s your name? How did you come to have it? Do you know what it means?

When I enrolled in a Bible as Literature class my first semester at Wichita State, I thought it would be an easy A.

Did you know that everybody here speaks Hebrew, at least a little bit? We all know at least a couple words in Hebrew, and we use them quite frequently.

If I were to ask you what the most religious holiday we celebrate each year is, what would your answer be?

After years of being warned it was coming, the people of Judah faced the unimaginable: the destruction of their capital city, Jerusalem, and their Temple on Mount Zion. The army of the Babylonian Empire, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, marched through Judah, destroying everything in its path.

Most of us Christians, I think, are a little bit too polite with God. I’m not sure just what that’s all about.

It was May of 1987. I had just finished my first year of college. My uncle Bob was about to receive his master’s degree from Oregon State University, and my grandparents wanted to go out and help him celebrate.

Any time you run into a psalm that has exactly 22 or 44 verses, you can be pretty sure it’s an acrostic psalm. It’s totally lost in translation, of course;

Scripture: Psalm 51 Doesn’t it seem like other people’s sins are so much more interesting—not to mention so much worse—than our own? After the incident with Bathsheba and the cover-up resulting in the murder of her husband Uriah, King David got a visit from the prophet Nathan. [1] Nathan didn’t […]