Sermons

Do you know who, according to the book of Genesis, founded the very first city ever?
It was Cain, Adam and Eve’s son—the same Cain who was the first murderer. Cain was the firstborn son of the very first people, the oldest member of the first generation who had never lived in Eden. After he killed his own brother, Abel, in a dispute over sacrifices to the LORD, he was sent out into the land of Nod—which means “Nowhere”—with a mark of God’s protection on his forehead. The first murderer built the first city, and named it after his eldest son, Enoch.

June 1, 2025 Revelation 19:6-9

If you spent some time thumbing through the Chalice Hymnal, you’ll find one topic missing: there aren’t any of the good old gospel hymns about Jesus’ blood.
Personally this doesn’t bother me most of the time. Those hymns are actually fun to sing; the tunes are rousing and upbeat, and in this part of the world a lot of us grew up immersed in that kind of theology, so we sing with great gusto.

Some years ago, The Christian Century reported on a study some anthropologists or someone had done.  What they discovered was that nearly all human beings are musical.  Something like 95 percent of people are capable of making music of some kind.  That means that out of every 100 people, only five are completely hopeless when it comes to music.

It seems like when you get ready to move to a new community, there’s one thing you don’t really know, maybe even can’t know, until you get there and actually start living your life: What’s the water like?

Before I start, it’s probably good to deal with a few minor things, so we all get on the bus together, as Fred Craddock sometimes said.
First, and probably least important, the name of the book is Revelation, not Revelations. Specifically, it’s The Revelation to John, although we don’t typically call it that.

Today’s story is, I suspect, among the Easter stories second in popularity only to the one in John 20, in which Mary Magdalene encounters the risen Christ in the garden outside his tomb. The reason may well be because we can all identify with it—even though none of us was there when they crucified our Lord, even though none of us was in that upper room when the women came rushing back from the tomb to tell the disciples the tomb was empty and angels had said Jesus was alive.

In Jewish biblical interpretation, students engage in a practice called Midrash, in which they discuss details that are left out of a text, or questions that the text raises but never quite addresses. This could be things like, “How did Sarah react when Abraham took Isaac up to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him, apparently because God commanded it?” Or, “Why did Lot’s wife turn around to see the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and why did she turn to a pillar of salt?”

Did you know that the first ticker-tape parade was held in New York City in 1886, during the celebration of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty?
It was apparently a spontaneous thing that time, but it quickly became a tradition. As the parade wound through the financial district, so the New York Times reported, office boys began to unwind spools of ticker tape out the windows over the procession, until the older, dignified and respectable businessmen pushed them out of the way so they could get in on the fun.

When I planned out my sermon topics for April, I noted that today’s reading is about “two healings.” The first one is obvious: as he goes into Jerusalem, Jesus encounters a blind beggar and restores his sight to him. This passage is pretty clearly borrowed from Mark, but Luke makes a couple changes to it.

This parable is truly fascinating to me. It might not be as beloved as last week’s three parables, especially the final one about the father whose lost son returns. But it’s fascinating, because the more you look at it, the more levels it seems to be working on.