Hometown Heroes: A sermon on Luke 4:14-30

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Luke 4:14-30

Our family went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole last night at the dinner table. For reasons I already don’t remember, we started looking up famous people who had attended our high schools and the high schools Margaret might attend next year after we move. My high school had Bill Nelson, a congressman who also traveled to space during the shuttle program. Phil’s had a member of the 1924 US Olympic soccer team.  Geneva doesn’t have a page of famous alumni, but we came up with a couple from our own memory, including the recent Olympic triathlon medalist. In Pennsylvania we found a couple of football players and the author of The Devil Wears Prada. 

Kevin McDowell, Geneva High School Class of 2011, Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, silver (Mixed Relay), 6th (Individual)

Hometown hero stories are fun, aren’t they? When our heroes that we’ve known since they were “this small” come home the local newspapers and television stations come out to take pictures and interview them. There’s a sense of pride and excitement.  Maybe they get to wave to the crowd from the middle of the football field during half time!

Jesus came back to Nazareth just such a hometown hero. 

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Words of Wisdom: A sermon on Proverbs 1:20-33 and Mark 8:27-38

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Proverbs 1:20-33
Mark 8:27-38

We don’t spend a whole lot of time in the book of Proverbs in our worship, so I think a little introduction could be helpful before we jump into the second reading.

Proverbs is an interesting book; it’s a book, not unlike the Bible itself, that is more like a collection. There are a number of different pieces from a number of different eras, based on the literature of a number of different cultures all smooshed together into one. (Smooshed – that’s a technical scholarly term.) There are the short two-liners containing teachable lessons, a favorite of the Israelite sages who put the book together in the royal courts of Israel after the return from the Babylonian exile.  There are extended poems about wisdom in a variety of forms, but one of the standout features is the personification of wisdom as a woman. As we know, there aren’t a lot of Scriptures where women are center stage in such an important way – especially where they are depicted as carrying an important divine attribute as wisdom.

Some of these personifications of wisdom as a woman, including the one we will hear today, come in poetry that is set up as a father giving advice to his son, or maybe a teacher to a student. I think that’s important because it’s not quite the same as a prophet who speaks a message from God to God’s people. It’s poetry, with all the literary forms we’ve learned in high school, such as parallelism and hyperbole and personification, and it’s instructional, trying to both explain and motivate toward a particular result.

With that introduction let’s hear the words of Proverbs from the 1st chapter, verses 20-33

Proverbs 1:20-33

Woman Wisdom is not a woman who is content on the sidelines, is she? 

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Shocking Inclusion: A sermon on Mark 7:24-37 and James 2:1-10, 14-17

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Mark 7:24-37
James 2:1-10, 14-17

Comedian Mike Birbiglia has a great line. In the early years of his comedy it became a sort of signature line in his particularly vulnerable style of story-telling.  In one version of a set called “My girlfriend’s boyfriend” he’s interrupted a story about a woman he recently dated to talk about the first girl he fell in love with in high school.

I find that when you fall in love, you tend to overlook certain red flags. One of them was that she would say really mean stuff to me, but then she would pull it back. She’d be like, “no one likes you at all. Only kidding.” Or, like, “you’re like a nerd, but you’re not even smart. Just joking.”

Second red flag with Amanda was that she was a liar. And I don’t… I don’t mean that in an offensive way.

The final red flag with Amanda was that she told me not to tell anyone that she was my girlfriend.    

I know. I’m in the future also.1

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Choose this Day: A sermon on Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 and James 1:17-27

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Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
James 1:17-27

As we as a country have made our final turn toward election day, I’ve noticed a picture being shared quite a bit on some social media platforms, and, for once, its a picture or post that doesn’t make me cringe. It’s a list of suggestions for how to post an interact on-line around political discussions that, hopefully, will prevent discord and vitriol. I know some of you have seen it as well, because you’re some of the folks who are resharing it in your social spaces. The text on the picture reads:

Between now and Tuesday, November 5:

POST WISELY!

  • Contribute to discussion – not division.
  • Don’t take the bait!
  • Check. Your. Facts.
  • Resist memes, cheap digs and name calling (That one is a little funny coming from a meme.)
  • Create constructive content.
  • We can transcend bitterness and be our better selves – even when we disagree.
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The Armor of God: A sermon based on Joshua 24: 1-2a, 14-18 and Ephesians 6:10-20

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Here’s a link to the worship video of this sermon which is also embedded at the bottom of the post.

Joshua 24: 1-2a, 14-18
Ephesians 6:10-20

And that building – it isn’t even half as old as our texts.

As some of you know, I spent almost 2 weeks in Scotland earlier this month.  I spent some of my time exploring the city of Glasgow, but for most of my trip I was a guest of the Iona Community at the 13th century abbey where they live in community and offer programming for pilgrims, learners, and visitors. Every morning and every evening in the sanctuary of that abbey I found myself in complete awe of the continuity of our faith – of the generations upon generations those stone walls had held, of the songs they had heard song, the prayers that were held in their crevices, the words of scripture that had echoed across their surfaces. It was breathtaking and centering and unifying every time we gathered, to be a part of something so ancient and so contemporary all at the same time.

It’s kind of amazing when you stop to think about it, that these words that we read on a Sunday morning (and hopefully more often than that!) have been read or heard for as long as the they have – a little less than 2,000 years for the text from Ephesians, at leas 2,600 years for the current form of Joshua. And still we turn to them.  Still we read them.  Still we question them. Still we listen for what God is saying to the church today through them.

That’s the good news about really old Scriptures.

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The Courage of Peace: A sermon on the beheading of John the Baptist, Mark 6:14-29

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Psalm 85:8-13
Mark 6:14-29

This is one of those Sunday mornings that potentially sent a number of preachers back to the drawing board based on Saturday’s news. It happens sometimes (and in the case of violence, particularly political violence, it seems to be happening more and more frequently). But it happens sometimes that something takes place in the neighborhood or country or world made that just can’t be ignored when the worshiping community gathers on Sunday morning, even if it happens after all the plans were made.

However, for folks following the lectionary, and even more particularly folks who had planned to preach from the gospel, there was potentially less re-writing to do. Because unfortunately, political violence isn’t new. And really it’s persistence is part of what makes it so evil. That human beings continue to think that scaring, and hurting, and even killing our opponents is a reasonable way to get to the more perfect society we crave is evidence of our sinfulness and the marring of God’s image in all of us.

Violence used to intimidate, violence used to threaten, violence used to try to appease one group or advance another, violence used to silence voices and the people we don’t like – is not the answer. It is not righteous. It is not God-fearing. It is not justice-seeking. It most certainly is not courageous, which, by my reading, is at least one point Mark is trying to make in telling the story of the violence of the beheading of John the Baptist in the middle of stories about the ministry of Jesus and the sending of his disciples.

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Faith in the storm: A sermon based on Mark 4:35-41 and Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32

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Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32
Mark 4:35-41

A few weeks ago in our weekly e-mail that goes out on Thursday afternoons I set up a framework for thinking about the three stories in Mark’s gospel that we have covered beginning on June 9. It hasn’t really been a series in the “5 keys to faithful relationships” kind of way, but together these three stories, and therefore these three sermons have offered us ways to consider reactions to the news that in Jesus the kingdom (or kindom) of God is near. 

As we looked at the story of Jesus being hunted down by religious scribes who wanted to destroy him, of the way his own family thought he was out of his mind, the question before us, in response to *that* kind of kindom was “What if I don’t like the disruption it causes?”

When next we turned to parables about seeds hidden in the ground or too small to be significant we considered of the kindom of God, “What if I can’t see it?”

And two and a half or three weeks ago when I was thinking about the story for today, I was wondering about the disciples’ worry that Jesus didn’t care about the storm and their lack of faith, and I thought maybe they were doubting the kindom with a question along the lines of “What if it isn’t strong enough?”

But… well… best laid plans. As Pastor Michelle pointed out a few weeks ago, sometimes the sermon we thought we were going to preach on Monday or Tuesday when we pick hymns and write prayers isn’t the sermon we end up with when we write on Thursday or Friday (or Saturday or Sunday morning).

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Seeds of Mystery: A sermon based on Mark 4:26-34 and Ezekiel 17:22-24

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Ezekiel 17:22-24
Mark 4:26-34

A few weeks ago, when we were still in the Easter season and reading from Jesus’ teaching in John about the vine and branches, I mentioned the advice given by a preaching professor that a sermon should not chase down a horticultural rabbit hole. I wasn’t too tempted that last time because I admittedly don’t know much of anything about growing vines. This week, as we hear the parable about a growing seed, I’m sort of tempted to fall down that hole, because my 3rd grade Brevard County Science Fair award winning project was titled “Are cotyledons necessary for the growth of baby bean plants?” The early growth of a seed is right up my alley. Or it was… at a 3rd grade level… close to 40 years ago.

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Losing the labels: A sermon on Mark 3:20-35

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Psalm 130
Mark 3:20-35

The worship video for this sermon can be found on YouTube.

It’s always a little strange when we jump into the middle of a gospel story, but this one, probably a less familiar story, seems particularly confusing. I mean, there are some quotable one-liners that we could likely quote or summarize, “a house divided against itself… will not be able to stand.” But Jesus being restrained by his family? Them thinking he’s out of his mind? An argument with religious officials about whether or not he’s in cahoots with the devil? 

How did things escalate so quickly? It’s only chapter 3!

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The Spirit of Trouble: A sermon for Pentecost, Acts 2:1-21

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Romans 8:22-27
Acts 2:1-21

Recently I was talking to a colleague who has stepped in to be the temporary pastor for a congregation that whose pastor is on maternity leave. As soon as she started at this church a couple of weeks ago, she learned that they had scheduled Youth Sunday for this week, which is Pentecost. The youth were told they didn’t have to follow the liturgical calendar, and they aren’t, so as my friend jokingly described it, “the church had cancelled Pentecost.” 

I wonder if there was a point in the apostles’ observance of the festival at which they wished they could cancel Pentecost. Did they wonder “could we trade this one in for just a normal holiday?”

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