Stumbling Blocks and Salt
A sermon on Mark 9:38-50 Whoever you are and wherever you find yourselves on your journey of faith, know that you are most welcome here to receive God’s goodness, mercy, and love. Amen. I always start my sermons with this prayer, but today I am very conscious that applies to me as much as to any of you. I need God’s goodness, mercy, and love – for all kinds of reasons. Today, one of those reasons is that this is a tough text for me to preach. For one thing, I am painfully awa
Upside Down Welcome
A sermon on Mark 9:30-37 Sometimes, the very first time I read through the next Sunday’s gospel lesson I will be struck by a particular realization or perspective that grabs hold of me and demands my attention as I prepare my sermon. This week that initial response was: “Jesus would have made a really bad business person.” In case that connection is not immediately obvious to you, I promise I will explain it, but not right away. First, I want to tell you about how this realiz
The Question of Who (and why it matters)
A sermon on Mark 8:27-38 This week, Facebook took me to church. On Monday, after doing my initial read of today’s gospel lesson, I thought it would be interesting to pose Jesus’s question to my Facebook universe. “Who Do You Say That I Am?” Since I am not Jesus, of course, I changed the language to ask “who is Jesus to you?”, and with a few other words to frame the question, I sent it out into the social media jungle. In about two and a half days I had gathered 80 different r
Be opened
The following is the script for an enacted sermon that was proclaimed in worship in the place of a traditional sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost. This dramatic reenactment of the gospel story uses a strategy of interrupted narrative, wherein the gospel story is retold - using the actual words of the gospel narrative (indicated by the quotations in the script)- but within the story much more detail is inserted, including notes about the context, imagined thought proc
A Neighborly Gospel (or, I’d Rather Have a Neighbor Than Clean Hands)
Sermon on Mark 7: 1-15, 21-23 This past Tuesday I got the chance to spend an evening with my Mom – just the two of us – and we decided to go see the film “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.” It’s a documentary about Fred Rodgers, the Presbyterian minister whose lifelong ministry to children included his creation, production, and involvement in just about every aspect of the PBS program “Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood.” I was excited to see the film with my mom, because my memories of Mr. R
