Sermons from November 2020

Sermons from November 2020

A Justifiable Hope

Isaiah 64:1-9 and John 1:1-18 Newsflash. Sometimes, even the most church-goin’, Bible-knowin’, down-on-their-knees-prayin’ people lose patience with God. Take Isaiah, for example. Isaiah was a prophet of Israel during one of the darkest periods of that people’s history. Actually, the Book of Isaiah had at least two, and probably three different authors. One section of Isaiah was written to Jews who had been conquered and taken from their homes to live in exile in Babylon. Much of what is contained…

Giving Thanks in the Worst Year of the 21st Century

Psalm 100 and 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Thanksgiving is the one time when families that never give a thought to saying grace at the table on the other 364 days of the year, will expect it to happen over this meal. They will insist on not carving the turkey or doling out the cranberry sauce, until someone has given thanks. One Thanksgiving a family was seated at their table, which was laden with turkey and all the fixings. Before digging in,…

The God We Think We Know

Matthew 25:14-30 The Parable of the Talents was never exactly one of my favorites. The way that my eyes glaze over at the sight of a spreadsheet reminds me that my management of the master’s portfolio might have been no better handled that of the unfortunate slave in this story. So, it follows that my fate would also have matched his. The parable tells the story of a master who entrusts three slaves with varying shares of his wealth, for…

Generation We

Joshua 24: 1-3a, 14-25 The story that the Bible tells often reads like a family tree of faith. Scattered throughout the Old Testament and the gospels are genealogies, like mile markers along a road. Those are the passages that never get read in worship, and the ones that we most likely skip over when we read the Bible ourselves. Why take the time to wade through lists of people who most have never heard of, with names that few can…

That You May Not Grieve as Others Do Who Have No Hope

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 The burial service had just ended, and after saying my goodbyes to the family of the deceased, I made my way through the gravestones to where my car was parked. Someone called out my name and I turned to see the daughter of the man who I had eulogized minutes before. “Pastor” she said, “have you got a minute?” She shared her concern that she would never see her father again. Not in the obvious way, of…