Farewell Sermon For Trinity
Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, Amen. I must say, I could not have been given a better text to preach my last sermon on for this congregation here in Robesonia. This is a text where everyone gets food! Not only that but there’s plenty of leftovers to take home. If there is one thing I have learned about Berk’s County, it is how important food is to all of you. But sharing food with the multitudes is not just important here at Trinity, it is a story central to sharing the Gospel itself. The feeding of the multitudes we hear today from John is such a central story in the New Testament that it is included six times in the four Gospels. For those of you counting, that means two of our Gospels tell the story...
Read MoreAn Image for the Kingdom
Grace and Peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, Amen. “With what can we compare the kingdom of God? What parable shall we use for it?” What images come first to your mind when you think about God’s kingdom? In this weekend’s first reading from Ezekiel we get an image of a great cedar which God raises up from a sprig on top of a mountain. Cedars grow nearly 130 feet tall, (to give you a common everyday frame of reference, that’s about six and a half T-rexes tall.) these are huge majestic trees with birds that nest in their tall lofty branches. It’s a big deal, and God puts one on top of a mountain. Shall we use that image for the kingdom of God? But why stop with only six and a half T-rexes? This is GOD’S...
Read MoreNicodemus and Do, do!
Grace be unto you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today’s Gospel lesson reminds me of the “Who’s on First?” sketch by Abbot and Costello. There are two people who seem to be talking about the same thing, they are even using the same words, but they still entirely misunderstand each other time and again as the conversation goes on. Words are slippery. When I say “I had chicken pot pie for dinner” I’m thinking something surrounded completely by pie crust with a creamy-chicken and carrot filling. But here in Berk’s county chicken pot pie means something completely different. When Abbot says “Who is on first” he means it as a statement, but Costello hears it as the same question he just asked: “Who’s on first?” And today in our Gospel,...
Read MoreChrist the Vine
Grace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today we hear in the Gospel of John, that Jesus is the true Vine, which if I understand it, means he’s the place where you can post video clips of the totes righteous sandwiches you are eating right now to share with your friends. For those of you that aren’t tech savvy, Vine is a web-service and phone app that is like twitter but with video instead of text. You get six seconds to tell your short video tale to the world! And you can share with all your friends, and you can even do stop motion tricks, and… And so what we learn today is, Jesus is the true place to send your video snippets?? OK, so maybe Jesus is not talking about the Vine App on your phone, he’s talking about...
Read MoreSermon: Doubting Thomas (That’s me!)
Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. This is one of the most fitting days for me to preach; because my name is Thomas, and I have a lot of doubts. The story goes that this Sunday is “doubting Thomas Sunday.” This is the day when we hear about the bad example of Thomas who doubted, when it would have been better for him to believe without seeing. I grew up hearing my namesake was the skeptic, the one who needs to see to believe. Thomas’s sin was that he demanded proof of Christ’s resurrection. The moral of the story was told to me, that doubt is bad, it is the opposite of faith, and blessed are those who do not need proof of God’s love. Thomases like me got a lot of bad press. But is what Thomas did really...
Read MoreSermon In Lent: Wrestling With John 3:16
Grace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, Amen. You’ve heard it! It’s been tweeted. Facebook can’t even with how many times it has been posted, liked and shared. It’s been shouted triumphantly, and whispered in fervent prayer. It’s been cross-stitched into wall hangings. It’s on bumper stickers. It’s glammed onto dorm-room walls. It’s embossed into commemorative bracelets. There’s always one low-rez self-proclaimed Christian that holds it up on a sign at sporting events. It has its own line of T-shirts. People have it tattooed on their bodies. I’ve even seen it on the bottom of coffee cups, and in football-player face paint. It’s John 3:16. It is the rockstar bible verse that everyone already knows and just plain gets by heart,...
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