Luke 2:21-38 When I was a kid, back in the late 60s and early 70s, there was one event that was the highlight of every fall—when the Sears Wishbook arrived in the mail. For you kids out there, this was before the days of the internet when shopping was actually done in stores and catalogs …
Part IV of the Advent Series “A Family Christmas” Matthew 12:46-50; I Peter 2:4-10 There’s a lot of debate out there these days about what constitutes American family values. Those values have become a political football in recent decades, with candidates running on various platforms that give visions of the ideal family. When I mention …
Part III of the Advent Series “A Family Christmas” Luke 2:39-52 Ever since the time of the early church, Christians have wondered about the “lost years” of Jesus–that period between the stories about his birth and the beginning of his public ministry at about age 30. That’s a pretty big gap of time to cover …
In Wisdom and Favor – The Family of Jesus Continue Reading »
Part II of the Advent series “A Family Christmas” Matthew 1:1-17; Romans 8:12-17 As an adopted child from the 1960s, I don’t know a lot about my birth family. All I’ve been able to glean, in talking to the agency that handled the adoption, is that I was born in a Salvation Army hospital in …
Part I of the Advent series “A Family Christmas” Genesis 1:26-28; Matthew 3:13-17 The first Sunday in Advent is always a time of anticipation. The decorations are up, Christmas music creeps into our consciousness, cookies are being baked, gifts are being purchased and wrapped. It’s a time for traditions, a time when we harken back …
Luke 17:11-19 Well, it’s Thanksgiving week and it’s a time for people to travel—or, more accurately, it’s time for people to get stuck in airports during what is always one of the busiest and most expensive times of the year. Traveling like that seems to always involve interruptions, especially if you’re making connecting flights in …
I Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 14:15-24 In a couple of weeks, many of you will be heading over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving. When I was a kid that’s what we actually had to do to get my grandma’s house—travel through the backwoods of Indiana County, PA and over a …
Sunday Dinner: The Case for Weekly Communion Continue Reading »
George Whitefield is perhaps the most famous American preacher that you’ve never heard of. When we think of great American preachers we might name Billy Graham, or Rick Warren, or to go back a little ways we might name a host of others like Charles Spurgeon or Jonathan Edwards. None of them, arguably, had more …
Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 12:1-2 We begin a new series on worship this week. I think it’s interesting because, in the main, most of us who come to worship never actually learned how to worship, or even why we worship. When I was a kid growing up I kind of learned to worship by osmosis—you know, …
Part IV of “I Am a Follower: The Way, Truth, and Life of Following Jesus.” John 15:12-17 One of the exercises that I’ve been involved with over the years is the crafting of mission statements. Oh, yes, I can hear some of you groaning right now. If you’re in a company or some other organization, …
Part III of “I Am a Follower: The Way, Truth, and Life of Following Jesus” Luke 11 Last Thursday I was doing some work in my study at home, preparing for this week’s sermon, actually, when my cell phone rang with a call from one of our sister churches saying that one of their members had …
Part I of the series “I Am a Follower: The Way, Truth, and Life of Following Jesus.” John 14:1-7 One of the great laments of living in the 21st century is that it’s increasingly difficult to find a good bookstore. When I was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago I happened upon a lovely …
Luke 11:1-13 In our latest sermon series we’ve been talking about prayer, which is, as John Wesley called it, “the grand means of drawing near to God.” We’ve talked about praying big prayers, which is where the story of Honi the Circle Maker challenged us. We’ve talked about praying with persistence and about praying for …
Joshua 6; Acts 10 In ancient Israel there was a man named Honi, which later generations also knew as Onias. You won’t find his story in the Bible but in some of the history of Israel surrounding the Bible, like in the Mishnah (a first/second century AD piece of rabbinic literature that captures some of …
In the Kingdom of God, being weird is a very good thing. John 4 Wow, what a week we have here a TLUMC with Vacation Bible School! It’s a week of holy chaos that’s full of joy and excitement. I look forward to it every year, as I did when I was a kid. This …