Sermon Archives

July 5, 2015

A Sabbath of the Mind

I know a man who grew up many years ago in what was then called the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The Evangelical and Reformed Church, or “E & R” as people affectionately called it, eventually merged into what is now the United Church of Christ. Anyway, this man tells the story of an incident that […]

June 28, 2015

Escaping Space, Entering Time

Keeping the Sabbath is one of the most difficult commandments to observe. Some of the other Ten Commandments are much easier easy to keep, at least for most people I know. Most of us have never murdered anyone; most of us don’t steal things; and most of us tell the truth about our neighbors. For […]

June 21, 2015

Wrestling with the Sabbath

For the first thirty-five years of my adult life, I did not take a twenty-four hour Sabbath every week. I almost never took any Sabbath of any kind, ever. I, a minister of the gospel for a quarter of a century, ignored the Sabbath. I had lots of excuses. I was a graduate student who […]

May 24, 2015

Pursuing Peace, Living Hope

There are so many stories and events from around the world that can leave us feeling hopeless and discouraged. These stories, which we hear and see on the news and internet, which we read in the papers, are all about what’s wrong in the world, where the latest natural disaster has happened, how many casualties […]

May 17, 2015

Forbearing with Others in the Church

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This summer in Kansas City, delegates to our denominational convention will discuss five resolutions. The first resolution talks about our opposition to sexual violence, the second talks about our hope for peace in Israel-Palestine, and the third talks about what it means for American Mennonites to live in a country that uses drones to make […]

April 19, 2015

What Kind of House?

What Kind of House?

This is the last sermon in our series on membership, mutual accountability and belonging. The Spiritual Leadership Team began having conversations about membership last fall, and this worship series grew out of those conversations. Since you may not remember the first 2 sermons, let me just re-cap briefly what they were about. You can go […]

April 5, 2015

Meditation for Easter

There’s a detail about this story that always intrigues me. It’s this: Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus the first time she sees him. This is interesting because she had spent lots of time with him during his ministry. She knew the way his eyes twinkled when he told stories. She was familiar with the way his […]

March 29, 2015

Learning from the Death of Jesus

In this series on death and dying, we’ve thought theologically about funerals, explored the pathway of grief, heard stories of loss and thought about responding to loss, and last Sunday, named some ways to prepare for our own dying. One important topic still remains for us, and that’s to think a little today about how […]

March 22, 2015

Getting Ready to Die

I once knew a man who did not die well. This man had a terminal illness, but instead of admitting to himself and others that he was going to die, he acted like he was going to live for decades to come. For example, he left the apartment he had been renting and went out […]

March 15, 2015

Responding to Loss

It is hard to know what to do with loss, whether the loss is our own, or someone else’s. We can feel overwhelmed by loss, and overwhelmed by the cumulative effect of loss. We can respond to loss in a variety of ways; we can become bitter about how life has treated us, or entrenched […]

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