Sermons

The Israelites danced and cheered in celebration when God brought them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, into the land beyond the sea, and let the sea swallow up Pharaoh’s pursuing army.

In the Enlightenment era, it was often said that religion and politics shouldn’t mix.
We mainline Christians, children of the Enlightenment that we are, have bought into the notion that religion is a private matter, just between us and God, just about our individual, personal salvation.

Years ago in Coffeyville, a bunch of new houses went up in a cul-de-sac off First Street. The young families who first lived in these new houses all got their heads together and decided they’d go all out decorating the neighborhood for Christmas.
I can’t remember what the actual name of the street is, but at Christmastime it was “Candy Cane Lane.”

The Revised Common Lectionary actually divides this passage up into two parts, and separates them by a full year. The first ten verses are assigned to the Fourth Sunday of Easter in Year A, and then verses 11-18 are assigned to the Fourth Sunday of Easter in Year B.

In Sac City, we had a combined youth group—the Christian, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches all worked together to operate it. The program was overseen by a council made up of the pastors of the participating churches, plus two representatives from the membership of each church.

My mom, Mike, and I find ourselves watching a lot of YouTube videos about archaeology, specifically British archaeology. My interest in this subject began when I was recuperating after breaking my arm, and then being stuck at home in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. At some point I stumbled onto reruns of the English program Time Team, which featured Sir Tony Robinson as presenter, with a team of archaeologists and other experts doing three-day exploratory digs at sites all over Great Britain.

I am of the opinion that many of the very best hymns we have available to us come from the Welsh hymn tradition. My favorite is CWM RHONDDA, which is more commonly known as “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.” We also have a set of words written for that tune by Harry Emerson Fosdick, the founding pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City, called “God of Grace and God of Glory.”

One of the most interesting parts of the story of the Bible is how and why the church decided what books would be included in the New Testament.
The word for the list of books contained in the Bible is “canon,” a word that originally meant “a measuring stick.” In order for a book to be part of the New Testament canon, three questions had to be answered with a “yes.”

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
if I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Children of an earlier era learned to say this prayer at bedtime. In those days, before vaccinations and antibiotics and so many other modern advances, death was a much closer reality than it sometimes is for us—especially for our children, whom we understandably want to shield from such things whenever we can. So perhaps the prayer was comforting in that earlier time. Nowadays, people find it terrifying.

When David grew old, there was quite a controversy about who would succeed him on the throne in Jerusalem. His oldest living son, Adonijah, assumed he would be king, and he began to act accordingly. But it had already been decided, and endorsed by God, that Solomon, Bathsheba’s second son with David (remember that the first one died as an infant), would be the next king. So there was some wrangling behind the scenes by the prophet Nathan and the priest Zadok, and some symbolic action featuring Solomon riding his father’s mule, after which Adonijah stepped aside and asked for Solomon’s mercy.

Did you ever notice that there are some people in your life who you like better and better the more you get to know them? And the converse is true, too: there are people we dislike more and more the longer we know them.
King David is like that for me.

When my sister and I were teenagers, we had friends who would sometimes come to our windows at night. It happened to her more than it did to me. A couple of Carrie’s friends worked at Wendy’s, where some of the food that was prepared and not sold had to be thrown out at closing time. They would sometimes bring some of the leftovers to her at 11:00 or midnight. Now and then she’d get a Frosty, if they were cleaning out the machine that night.