2022 Sermons

God, the Reconciler

Many people get emotionally mushy at Christmas, and many carols and other Christmas songs foster theological squishiness. Up to a point, that is probably inevitable. But Jesus did not come to earth primarily to make us feel good about either him or ourselves. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. That is why Jesus was born. Jesus had a unique calling from God, compared to everyone else who has ever lived.

Halloween, Luther, and the Reformation

Thank God for God, and for Jesus. Were it not for them, what we believe might be fundamentally little more than ignorant superstitions. Superstition was the sort of cockamamie thinking that led to the Renaissance and the Reformation. By the eighteenth century, John Locke, Edmund Burke, William Pitt, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison came along. At last we were out of the bad times and into much better times.

Planters, Waterers, and the Grower

We are standing on the shoulders of giants - - - all of us. Back there we all had our own giants, and we are who we are in large measure because of who they were. God moved us to be moved by them. They were the personal movers and shakers who helped nurture us into the people we became. Everyone has a role to play in the great scheme of things. God weaves the lives of all of us into a beautiful tapestry of human existence on Planet Earth.

Doing the Most with What We Have

During the lifetime of Jesus, almost nobody lived long enough to retire, at least in the sense that we understand retirement. Nearly everyone lived a subsistence existence. Few people grew old, and those who did get old still worked at whatever they were able to do to keep the three-generation-family-all-living-in-one-place operating at optimal capacity. Whether young or old, talented or limited in ability, everyone was expected to pull his or her weight to keep the wolf away from the door.

Why Anthropogenic Climate Change WILL Nearly Destroy Everything on Earth

The word “anthropogenic” is a scientific word. It means “human-generated.” Therefore what is being implied by this bleak sermon title is that human beings will destroy nearly all the life of all the plants, animals, and people on earth. We are the primary cause of the current climate-change crisis. If we keep doing what we have been doing, we may succeed in destroying everything, so that Planet Earth will become like all the other planets in our solar system, with no life at all.

The Bible as the Word of God

What does it mean to say that the Bible is the word of God? Does it mean that everything in the Bible is what God told somebody to write down, or did they write it down, and then , years or centuries later, they decided it was holy scripture and it all was approved to go into the Bible? Are Christians obligated to accept everything in the Bible literally to be God’s word?

The Chapel Without Walls: January and December, 2024

On January 5, 2004, we held our first service. On January 6, 2024, we will celebrate our twentieth anniversary as a congregation. To be candid, I never thought about a twentieth anniversary back then, but I do now, because it is an important milestone. On December 19, 2024, I will celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of my ordination, if I live that long. I have no reason at this time to imagine that I won’t live that long. However, sixty years is a very long time for any preacher still to be preaching.

Does God Answer Prayers?

If you don’t get what you ask for in your prayers, does that mean God does not answer them? When David did not escape his enemy, apparently he decided that if he continued to trust in God’s steadfast love, he would be okay whether or not he averted his adversary. Maybe he concluded that was the only answer he needed. Trust in God, and you’ll get through whatever is necessary. That may have not been a crystal-clear answer to the Sweet Singer of Israel, but it seemed to be enough of an answer for him all the same.

The Coarse Course of American Culture

Jeremiah was surely the most gloomy of all the biblical prophets. This is linguistically validated by the fact that a caustically carping criticism of anything is often called a “jeremiad.” Furthermore, the passage I chose to illustrate today’s sermon title was such a severe criticism that it is repeated verbatim in both the 6th and the 8th chapters of Jeremiah’s prophecy. But then, biblical prophets always appeared when things were bad, not when things were good, and things were really bad when Jeremiah came along.

The Gift of the Jews

In many ways the Jews are the most remarkable ethnic and religious group of people every to have inhabited this planet. They are by no means the largest nationality there ever was, or the strongest, or the most widespread (although for their numbers they are astonishingly widespread). Nobody else in world history has had as much influence on the entire human race as the Jews: not the Mesopotamians or Egyptians or Romans or Chinese or Indians or Russians or Germans or French or British, and certainly not the Americans. The Mesopotamians and ancient Egyptians and Romans are long gone, and the Russians and Europeans and Americans are decidedly johnny-come latelies compared to the Jews.

The Delusion of the Righteous

According to the superscription at the beginning of Psalm 25, it says that it is a Psalm of David. David, as I have said on many previous occasions, was a psychological and theological piece of work if ever there was one. He was a very complex man. Among other things, he had a greatly unpredictable degree of self-awareness, depending on what mood he was in when he wrote each particular Psalm which is ascribed to him.

The Hymn to Biblical Humanism

The Book of Psalms is the Bible’s hymnal. Originally all of the Psalms were sung. They still are sung every day in every monastery and convent around the world. I chose Psalm 8 for today’s sermon theme specifically because it is a paean of praise to the human race. Presumably it was David who wrote it, or at least that’s what the superscription at the beginning says. In any case, this is the quintessential hymn to biblical humanism.

The Sermon on the Mount: The House on the Rock

This is the last in a series of eight sermons about the Sermon on the Mount. I did not cover everything in these three highly condensed chapters in the Gospel of Matthew. If I had done that, we would likely be going until late August or sometime into September, and I might have lost at least half a congregation in the process. The Sermon on the Mount, in its totality, is about twice too long for the average person to be willing --- or able --- to absorb it quickly. But I hope we have covered most of the important sections of this very influential portion of scripture.

The Sermon on the Mount: The Danger of Jaundiced Judgments

The subject for our consideration today is the matter of judging others. And the first question we need to address is this: When we judge people, do we judge their behavior, or do we judge them as persons? When we judge behavior, we are making assessments of their actions, and that may be not only justified, but necessary. In a classroom of young children, the teacher must make judgments on how each child is learning the material, and also how they are treating the other children. If there is misbehavior, the teacher must correct bad actions, but must never treat the student as a bad person. Those who are made to believe they are bad may subconsciously reflect that belief by continuously engaging in bad behavior. They feel obligated to live up to their reputations. Young men who take AR-15s and kill or injure lots of people are like that.