Sermons

I think I was probably eight or nine; Gram and Papa were up visiting for a weekend. Gram happened to notice that I hadn’t made my bed one morning. I knew how to make my bed; my mom had taught me to make it when I was four. But I guess I didn’t want to deal with Gram giving me a hard time about not making my bed, so when she asked me why I hadn’t made it, I said, “I don’t know how.”

Do you remember the ads, some years ago, with the two guys who introduced themselves like this?
“Hello, I’m a Mac.”
“And I’m a PC.”
PC is buttoned up, nearly always in a suit and tie, while Mac is generally much more casual.

We learn it in Sunday school and pastors’ classes, we hear it in sermons, and we can all say it with some certainty: God takes away our sin through Jesus Christ—specifically, we might say, through Jesus’ death on the cross. But what’s it mean?

Years ago a group of pastors online were having a discussion that turned into just another skirmish in the “worship wars.”  You know what I’m talking about:  the seemingly endless argument between those who favor traditional worship and hymns and those who prefer contemporary worship and praise music.

Many years ago I read a story—I don’t remember where, although it might have been in one of the late Tony Campolo’s books—about a preacher in a huge, multi-racial church in the deep South, not too long after the civil rights demonstrations that brought an end to legalized segregation in this country. This preacher was asked how it happened that this church in the deep South was so large and so racially mixed. He said that it hadn’t always been like that.

There was always music in our house when my sister and I were growing up. The radio was on, or there would be a record playing, and when we moved out to Ohio Street we had a piano and took lessons.

Awhile back when Mike and I were on a road trip somewhere, we passed an old pickup with a rugged-looking bearded guy driving. I took one look at that truck and said, “They’re Disciples.”
Mike asked me, “How do you know that?” I pointed to the red chalice sticker in the back window, just like the one that’s on our bulletin this morning, in the stained glass over the west doors, and on the sign outside.

Humanity has historically had trouble when our knowledge and technology advance, but our morality and ethics lag behind. The law of unintended consequences, which I’ve talked about many times, figures into this; but there’s more to it than just that.

November 10, 2024 (Proper 27) “Teach Us, Oh! LORD…to PRAY” Matthew 6:5-15 & Luke 11:1-4 Outline:              I.                    the PLACE          of PRAYER II.                  the PURPOSE    of PRAYER III.                the PLAN            of PRAYER IV.                the POWER        of PRAYER

Humanity has historically had trouble when our knowledge and technology advance, but our morality and ethics lag behind. The law of unintended consequences, which I’ve talked about many times, figures into this; but there’s more to it than just that.

Looking back at it from here, I’m not sure that Solomon’s temple was an unqualified good for his people.
It was a great and magnificent building project, one in which many of Solomon’s people participated. Such building projects often bring a people together with a common purpose, sort of like fighting, supporting, and ultimately winning the Second World War brought the people of many nations together. That isn’t a bad thing, of course. But in the case of the temple, not everybody who worked on it did so voluntarily.

Once again we’ve skipped forward many centuries between last week’s reading and today’s.
Israel has long been settled in the Promised Land, sometimes called Canaan in the Bible. They conquered the peoples who were already living there—although some historians nowadays say it’s more likely that they moved in and eventually everybody assimilated into one people, rather than a wholesale “Manifest Destiny”-type conquest. I don’t know that there’s any way to know for sure, and for our purposes today, it doesn’t matter.