2024 Sermons

A Christian Counter-Culture

The world could use another Counter-Culture, a Christian Counter-Culture, one which recognizes that where we are isn’t where we want to be, that the kind of world we have created is inimical to children and other humans, that if we continue on in the direction we have been following we will have guaranteed that only miracles will enable the world to be what God wants it to be.

Hilton Head Affordable Housing Isn’t

In every community everywhere, the people who need the most help are often the ones who are the least likely to get it. People with the means to take care of themselves ordinarily, but not always, do so. They love to say, God helps those who help themselves.” Because lower income folks may simply lack the financial resources to do that adequately, they fall between the cracks of the fiscal floor necessary to live comfortably. Yesterday an Island Packet story said only 37% of our town employees live on the island. There are workers who reside in substandard housing on-and-off-island who are paying fifteen hundred dollars or more to rent those homes. We need to provide much more affordable housing to the thousands of people who work here but cannot afford to live here. In thus serving them, we also will be serving God.

Thoughts on a Total Solar Eclipse

Christian people, the light during the eclipse was unearthly! It was the light of physics! Light was being bent around the sun’s corona. This was not sunlight; it was starlight! It was the light from zillions of stars, projected from the glowing corona! It was indescribably beautiful! It was serene! It was surreal! It was spiritual! It was light made possible only by a Power able to put every star in space into orbit, and all that light was lighting the earth when the sun itself was completely dark! I shall never forget that unearthly, singular light.

  Is Easter Based on Fact or Faith?

So it's Easter again. When that happens, as it does every year, many preachers ask themselves, "This year, should I try to make them simply feel good, or should I try to make them think?" In my head I hear a little voice that says, "Listen: 95% of them want to feel good on Easter, and only 5% want to think.  Why would you even think of thinking?"  So I ponder that, and I come to grips with the way I know the tide is running. But then I hear another little voice, a different one, and this one says, "So when did you ever just try to make them feel good, on Easter or any other Sunday?  Make them think, for heaven's sake!" So I say to myself, "You're right; when did I?  Okay," say I to The Second Little Voice, "we'll go for the second option."

Is He a King?

For Jesus, Palm Sunday may have been personally the most edifying day of his life. It was probably the first time that a large crowd had ever responded to him with loud acclamations. Previously, crowds had listened to him, but they hadn’t collectively shouted praises to him. On Palm Sunday they did, and it must have felt very encouraging to him. But the excitement did not last long. The rest of Holy Week was a steep plummet downhill, as we all know.

Great Expectations Can Make Life Miserable

What if you had great expectations for how your life was going to turn out, and it didn't turn out that way?  What if you imagined your children would certainly be headed in a certain direction, and they went off in the opposite direction?  What if you have always wanted something, a very worthwhile something, something which would benefit the whole world as well as yourself, but it hasn't happened, and neither you nor the world have had even a fleeting taste of it?  What if life just hasn't worked out as you thought it would --- or should?

Is Cultural Christianity Christianity?

Culture can do much damage to religion, and religion can do much damage to culture. Too many nineteenth-century missionaries in too many parts of the world were more concerned with cultural norms from back home than with the essence of Christianity for the peoples they were sent to convert. They believed it was necessary first to put sufficient amounts of cloth over the bodies of people who lived in the tropics and only after that to expose them to what they saw to be the eternal truths of what they saw to be the unalterable Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Saving the Planet Equals Saving Ourselves

Although the human race had a very spotty record as creation custodians up until this century, there really were not enough of us around completely to botch our responsibility, nor did we have the technological or demographic capability of destroying the planet. Now, by means of excessive consumption and overpopulation, we do. We have acquired this odious ability only in the last fifty years or so. No generation has had the awesome burden on their shoulders which our generation has.

Has God No Sense of Public Relations?

Listen very carefully, Christian people: God does not operate on the basis of popularity polls.  He goes on being God whatever we may think of Him.  But God rarely if ever magically straightens anything out. He doesn’t have an option to do that.  To be God is to be cosmically in charge, to exercise universal authority, but it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to improve the world.