Sermon Blog

I love watching storms.  You can ask Anita.  She has had to fuss at me through quite a few.  During our first hurricane, Fran, at 2 am I was standing with the backdoor of the parsonage open, with the wind blowing pine needles, leaves, and branches straight toward us, just watching the storm.    I hung out under the carport during parts of both Floyd and  Isabel , as I do for almost any lightning storm that I can.  Even though I fell asleep right before Arthur made land fall while we were at Atlantic Beach (after Fran, Floyd, and  Isabel —Arthur seemed like a mere summer storm to me), the next morning I went and spent an hour walking on the beach in the back end of the winds.  In fact, one of the first DVD’s we bought was Twister and Blu-Ray’s was The Day After Tomorrow . Like I said, I love watching storms… I’m not too sure that any of the Twelve did though.  Jesus had spent the day teaching and healing—then when din...

“Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.  Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot./Wouldn’t you like to get away?/ Sometimes you want to go/Wherever everybody knows your name,/and they’re always glad you came.  You wanna be where you can see,/our troubles are all the same/You wanna be where everybody knows your name.” How many of you remember those lyrics?  They were the theme song for the television show Cheers , a show about a group of regulars who hung out in a bar in Boston, sharing drinks, their stories, their very lives. Picture, if you will, a different room where folks had gathered.  Rather than descending steps to find Norm, Cliff, Sam, Coach, Carla, and Diane, we climb the stairs to encounter Peter, James, John, Andrew, Matthias, Nathaniel, Levi, Judas the Zealot, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, James, and maybe even Mary Magdalene, Martha, and others.  They could still have the same song going in the bac...

Happy Mother’s Day…How many of you were tempted to say “Happy Mother’s Day to you too?”  Do you ever catch yourself doing that?  Someone wishes you Happy Mother’s Day, Happy Father’s Day, Happy Birthday, or some other such even that pertains to you, and you start to wish it back, without thinking that it doesn’t apply to them.  I wonder why we do that.  Is it because we don’t think enough about what we are saying before we speak, or is it because we want the other person to feel as special as they made us feel at that moment? That’s not our question today, though.  It is “Who’s Your Momma?” Why ask that question?  Shouldn’t it be obvious?  Our Scripture readings this morning gives us pause to ask the question, suggesting maybe it is not that obvious. With the passage from Timothy, we kind of get the traditional sense of mothers.  Paul is writing Timothy and says, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother...

Can you imagine?   I mean, really, can you imagine what it had to be like?  It was not the first time and the means and method are a little different, but at its core it is the same. The first instance we read of is with Abraham.  Abraham and Sarah are childless.  By the time we encounter them, they, evidently, are past the point of longing for a child and Abraham is resigned to the fact that all of his belongings will be passed along to his nephew or one of his servants.  Then he and Sarah receive this promise that they will have a son.  Without going through all the details of what comes and remains a complicated story, we find, with Abraham at the ripe age of 100 and Sarah 90, the two of them celebrating the birth of their son Isaac.  Finally, Sarah has a child, removing the decades of stigma of being barren—and Abraham finally has the heir that God has promised. Years pass and Isaac grows through his childhood into his late teens and in...