Sermon Archives

wonder
April 6, 2014

Words

Sometimes words seem so cheap. Have you noticed this? Once I attended a conference where we were treated to a guest preacher who had been flown in from several states away. He was fairly well-known with wide name recognition. Early in the worship service we in the audience sat expectantly, waiting until the moment when […]

March 30, 2014

God-Smacked

During my first year at Chicago Theological Seminary, I lived in one of the seminary’s dormitories. One afternoon at 5:00 I left my dorm room and walked down to the dormitory kitchen, located in the basement. This kitchen served all the students who lived in that dorm. We each had our own cupboard and cooked […]

January 26, 2014

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall….Reflecting God’s Image

I love the bodies of babies and young children. It amazes me how they enter the world with everything they need in order to survive‐‐healthy lungs that breathe and support their strong voices, digestive systems that take in food and expel what is not needed. And yet, these bodies are vulnerable, weak‐‐most newborns can’t hold […]

December 15, 2013

Waiting at the door with Elizabeth and Mary

All of this happens in the doorway. Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s house ‐ the cousins exchange greetings. We could ask the same question of Mary that Mary asked of the angel some months ago. When the angel came to Mary she wondered what kind of greeting this might be. Now we get a strange greeting […]

November 24, 2013

The Visible Face of God

For a lot of people today, God seems invisible. You may know that the number of so‐called “nones” is on the rise in North America. “Nones” include atheists, agnostics, and others who mark the option “none” when asked what their religion is. One recent poll by the Pew Forum discovered that nones now make up […]

April 28, 2013

Lost in Wonder, Love, and Praise

I was talking a while back with my friend Paul. He told me one morning at dawn he was driving into Goshen for a meeting. Just outside of Goshen the sun started to rise over the horizon, radiating pinks, yellows, and oranges across the landscape. “It was so stunning I had to pull my van […]