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 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 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 on Epiphany 3b- Repentance
Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Imagine with me a boy on a typical day in High School. His backpack balloons out from his back like a bag of cement. Locker doors are shuddering on their hinges as kids haplessly throw books into their metallic bottoms. It could be lunchtime, and the smell of overmoist bread, mustard, and salami wafts through the air. Now there’s also a particular girl who this boy is pining after. He thinks he’s in love. We’ll call her Jenny. He’s been sitting Jenny’s at lunch table for several weeks in a row. Today he finds out from listening to her conversation, that Jenny really likes this band called Third Eye Blind. It seems to be all that she can talk about, and this song...
Read MoreSermon on The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids.
Grace be unto you from God our Father and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Sometimes I wish Jesus would just keep his mouth shut. I’m going along just fine, I’m fighting on his side as he squabbles with the chief priests and elders in the temple, and then he drops something like this parable today. Really Jesus? You had to go there? I bet you just said that to make it difficult for 21st century vicars to preach. You purposely made up that parable to make sleepless nights for people like me, didn’t you? It is as if he said: “Let’s watch the preachers squirm and wiggle about this one on Sunday.” In all seriousness, the parable of the ten bridesmaids is a difficult text. Its imagery is obscure and it does not easily translate into modern day understanding. It...
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