The Resolutionary War

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Text on Sunday, January 3, 2010Matthew 2: 1-12 It’s the first Sunday of a new year. Ah! The clean, fresh air! We seem more willing to trust this date—oh-one/oh-one!—to bring new energy to life than Christmas or any...

Dreams Come True

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Texts on the First Sunday after Christmas    Matthew 2: 13-23 Some years ago, Garrison Keillor’s “News from Lake Wobegon” told of a very old widow from Chicago who undertook to place a proper stone...

Leave the Light On

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Christmas Eve 2009     John 1: 1-14 How many and different are the reasons that we have come here tonight. Part for the perfect topping on the Christmas cake. Part to float down the river of tradition in...

God’s Not

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Texts on Advent Four, Sunday, December 20, 2009    Luke 1: 39-56 Philippians 2: 5-8 The Magnificat is not a mother’s psalm especially, nor even a woman’s. It sounds like many others. Psalm 107 and 98 and 147 use some of...

In the Matrix of Hope

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Text for Advent Three, December 13, 2009Luke 1: 26-38 The actual words, few and simple, came to me during a conversation with my very close friend John near the end of my seminary training. “Interpretation is...

Forces in the Desert

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Text on Advent 2, December 6, 2009    Luke 3: 1-6 Luke would have loved the movies. Can’t you see the storyboard for Chapter 3?: “1. Long shot of Milky Way galaxy tracking in fast on Planet Earth. 2. With voice...

What Are We Waiting For?

(Originally titled Eternal Return) download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Text on Advent One, November 29, 2009Luke 21: 25-36 The decade from Hell,” is the handle the current Time Magazine gives to the otherwise nameless ten years now passing over....

From Prison

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Text on Sunday, November 15, 2009Psalm 88 Ten years ago this month, I joined a weekly conversation underway with prisoners at Attica since just after the rebellion there in 1971. About a dozen men in greens gather in a...

If God Does Not Exist

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Texts on Sunday, November 8, 2009  Genesis 1: 1-5 and John 1: 1-5 Søren Kierkegaard told a parable about this peculiar event we’re in right here, right now—a sermon. The gist of it is that ordinarily you suppose...

It’s About Time

download a PDF of this textlisten to this sermon Text on Sunday, November 1, 2009    Luke 14: 12-24 Today—November 1—they call All Saints Day. It’s the day that Halloween is “een” to, the evening of All Hallows. It’s the Christian day of...