John

Covenantal Calling: A sermon for Confirmation Sunday on Genesis 35:9-15 and John 15:9-17

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Genesis 35:9-15
John 15:9-17

The worship video for these sermon is cued at the end of the manuscript or the entire video can be found on YouTube.

A few months ago a conversation started in a Facebook group for Presbyterian leaders about one pastor’s struggle to get a mouse out of the church kitchen.  The church didn’t want to use poison near food.  They didn’t want a trap that might hurt the mouse. The exterminator was too expensive. And on and on and on.  One witty, and maybe even tired, colleague suggested, “Just baptize and confirm it. Then you’ll never see it again. At least that’s how it works at my church.”

That’s one of those sad-funny ones, isn’t it?

In celebration of Confirmation, I share a picture of my own confirmation class. I’m the one with the shoulder length perm, white dress with a black belt, standing next to the Rev. Dr. Roy McCormick of Eastminster Presbyterian Church, Indialantic, FL. (1990)
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No “if”s: A sermon on John 15:1-8 and 1 John 4:7-21, 5th Sunday of Easter

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A video of the full service in which this sermon was preached can be found here.

1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

I’m not the gardener in our household. I think I have mentioned this before. I truly don’t know what I’m doing either with the decorative plants out front or the food that is growing in the back. At the Youth Group flower fundraiser last year I almost made a very accidental HUUUUUGE donation because I didn’t understand how many flower plants were in a flat. I mean, I know nothing. During the pandemic, I got a little on board with the houseplant trend, but, my part of our little plant area often looks like a plant hospital. This is not my arena. I love plants! I enjoy them a great deal. I just require some more knowledgable help to keep them alive.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
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Thin Place – A Maundy Thursday meditation on Mark 12 and John 15 from a Wizard of Oz Lent

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Mark 14:12-16, 22-25
John 15:12-15

Celtic spirituality, both pre-Christian and Christian, has given us the language of thin places to describe places where it feels like the realms of the human and divine mingle.  “Heaven and earth,” the Celtic saying goes, “are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. Journalist and author, Eric Weiner, writes of thin places, “[They] relax us, yes, but they also transform us – or, more accurately, unmask us.”

Ruins from Iona Abbey by Iain Marshall is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

People often talk about temples and cathedrals as thin places, or particular geographies – mountaintops or beaches – but in a New York Times travel article, Weiner argues that thin places can be more unconventional as well – a city park, a bookstore, or even a bar. Thin places give us a glimpse or a feeling of a reality different from what we typically experience – a reality more closely aligned with God’s spirit and intentions than we typically see.

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Kin(g)dom Sight: A sermon for January 14, 2024, Martin Luther King, Jr Weekend, based on John 1:43-51

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The worship video for this sermon is available here.

John 1:43-51

Photo by wendel moretti on Pexels.com

It has taken me a while to warm to up to the gospel according to John. And by a while I don’t mean a few days this week in preparation for worship today. I mean like years, decades. Maybe it’s taken that long for my brain that was trained in the sciences to finally open up to the poetry and symbolism and mysticism in the fourth gospel. But I’m coming around to. Where I used to get frustrated, thinking, “Just say what you mean.” Now I’m more intrigued by how many different things are meant by the one thing that is said.

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What is truth? – A sermon for Reign of Christ Sunday

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John 18:33-38a

“What is truth?” Pilate asks of Jesus.  What is truth?

This question struck me this week as I, like so many others, have been
watching the world news unfold in the wake of the attacks in Paris, as a public debate is taking place about what the “true” Christian response is to a Syrian refugee crisis, as violence continues to break out around the globe and still it seems that light-skinned people are mourned more 22654306929_5a32b321cadeeply and more publicly than dark-skinned people..  “What is truth?” I’ve wondered as protesters have been gathering in front of a Minneapolis
North Side police precinct office demanding answers to questions surrounding the death of Jamar Clark who was shot by police a week ago. Not just “what is ‘the’ truth?” but what is truth when there are so many people and perspectives and experiences involved.  “What is truth?”
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