Sermons

There are lots of stories in the Bible where someone’s name gets changed.
Abram becomes Abraham when God fulfills his promise to make Abraham the father of nations.
Jacob becomes Israel—“one who struggles with God”—after spending a night wrestling with his conscience, an angel, the spirit of the stream he’s camping beside, or God himself.

Every culture has its rules about food—about what can be eaten and what can’t, how things are to be prepared, even how the animals used for meat are treated, slaughtered, and processed.

I’m not really a whole lot of fun to watch movies and TV programs with if they’re based on books, or at least books I’ve read. I’m sure Mike got really sick of me pointing out the cinemutation that occurred in that series.

We have been dramatically reminded that even those Gothic cathedrals, built nearly a millennium ago and standing mostly intact ever since, are not permanent. The mortar that holds the stones together will eventually crumble and the walls will fall. We hope it isn’t in our lifetime, but the reality is that nothing built by humans is eternal. Nothing is permanent.

When Jesus told parables, he told them using images that were familiar to the people he was speaking to.
He told stories about shepherds and sheep, about planting and harvesting, about working and getting paid, about bread-baking—he told stories that started with something his hearers would recognize.

One could argue that the First Commandment is the hardest one to keep. “You shall have no other gods besides me.”

I have to say I have a problem with the whole idea of church discipline. Maybe it’s just because I am immersed in a culture that values individualism and independence, and doesn’t have much use for restrictions on our personal freedoms. But I’ve also seen and heard of church discipline being misused.

We need to put today’s reading in context before we start doing any thinking about it. We need to know what has happened just before this, and what happened just after it.

I’m a city girl. I’ve always been a city girl. The closest I’ve come to farming is growing a few tomato plants in the backyard. But even a city girl like me knows that what Jesus is describing is a pretty poor way to raise a crop.

Maybe you’ve seen this: one of the latest diet trends is to teach people, “Eat This, Not That.” There’s a whole series of books, and even a magazine, with that title. When I was trying to figure out how to nurse my insides back to health after that nasty bug I got just before Christmas, I found websites with the same title, explaining how a person with touchy guts could keep them calm. It seems simple, a few quick swaps and you’ll be on your way to health.

Who is truly blessed, truly fortunate, truly happy? What does the world around us say? If we read or watch the news, I think we can draw a few conclusions about whom the prevailing culture considers blessed.

Once upon a time, a girl (let’s call her Hannah) coming close to the time of her bat mitzvah began to test the boundaries of what it meant to be a Jew and whether or not she wanted to take up that identity for herself.