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It's About the Prayer, Not the Answer
A sermon on Luke 11: 1-13 (for an audio recording of this sermon, click here) Do you all remember the old Garth Brooks song Unanswered Prayers? (It was very popular back when I was in High School, so it has a certain nostalgia for me). If you don’t know it, the song tells the story of running into an old high school flame later in life, after marrying someone else. The song recalls the desperate, persistent prayers of teenage longing for that first love, but the point of the
Martha Needs Some Love
(A sermon on Luke 10:38-42; an audio recording of this sermon, click here) I am NOT the world’s best housekeeper. I admire people who can keep their homes organized and clean at all times. Who have a “place” to store everything they own and who consistently keep those things in those places, and then also consistently sweep, and dust, and mop, and scrub all their surfaces with cleaners… I think that’s amazing! I would love to live in a house like that! But in the rhythms of m
Healing Is Better Than Self-Justification
A sermon on Luke 10:25-37 [for an audio recording of the sermon, click here] Several of the commentators I read this week offered some variation on the theme that it’s really hard to actually engage with the Parable of the Good Samaritan because it is so. very. familiar. Debie Thomas’ assessment along those lines is perhaps the most incisive: “I read, I nod, and I walk away, unafflicted and unchanged.”[1] She’s making a point that I think is essential to hearing the parables
A Challenging Peace
A sermon on Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20 [for an audio recording of this sermon, click here] Today’s gospel story raises an important question: Do we want peace? More specifically, do we want the kind of peace that Jesus’s followers were told to offer to the homes and communities that they entered on their mission? The answer would seem to be obvious, especially in a congregation named Abiding Peace. Who among us wouldn’t want peace? But the story suggests that the answer is NOT obvi
