Sermons
The summer I turned sixteen I spent six weeks living with a family in Madrid as an exchange student with Youth for Understanding. They had a few books in English in their library and I read one of them titled, The Ugly American. That book made me so angry at our diplomatic ineptitude that I decided then and there that we could do better, and I would train to be a diplomat who spoke the language of the country where he was stationed, learned their culture, sought to find common ground toward a more peaceful and just world. (Click here to continue reading.)
We have been enjoying singing favorite carols this morning, which is a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas. By the way, Christmas is a feast of twelve Days in the Christian Calendar, not just a single day. That explains the song about the twelve days of Christmas. I have chosen a favorite scripture passage for reflection on this first Sunday in Christmas. The first chapter of John is a masterpiece that harkens back to the opening words of the Bible, “In the beginning,” and links them to the birth of Jesus Christ, the Word, who was with God and was God and through whom all things were made. The scope of those words is breathtaking. The passage goes on to say that the world by and large did not grasp what happened in the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. His reception in his hometown of Nazareth was tepid turning to hostile, leading Jesus to say that a prophet is not without honor except in his own hometown. (Click here to continue reading.)
We begin a new year with the hope that it will be new and happy and unlike the previous two years which put us on the ropes. The two years of Covid disrupted our lives in so many ways. Economically we took a major hit with unemployment soaring to over 15% from a low of 4.8%. Socially we were forced indoors, unable to get out and mingle and attend concerts and sporting events, and church. Children couldn’t attend school, creating a crisis of childcare for millions of families and robbing students of the joy of interacting in person with their peers and teachers. My wife Gail did her best to adjust teaching statistics to her college students via zoom. That turned out to be a lot more work for her and less than ideal for her students. (Click here to continue reading.)
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Remember the television series Mission Impossible? It began with a brief recording along these lines, “Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to . . . .” And then it went on to explain the daunting if not impossible mission to be accomplished. I can’t ever remember the recipient of the message saying, “I think I will pass on that one. Get back to me later with another proposal and perhaps I will consider it.” Without exception they took on the challenge and somehow managed to do it against all odds. (Click here to continue reading.)
Did anyone read the sermon title in the Herald and come thinking I was going to talk about some juicy dispute in our sister city of Carmel? Sorry to mislead you, but the Carmel I am talking about is the mountain on the northwest coast of Israel with the vale of Jezreel, the most fertile farmland in the country, to the south east, and the stunning bay of Joppa to the northwest. It looks a lot like our Monterey Peninsula with pine trees covering its slopes. (Click here to continue reading.)
When I was working on the dissertation project for my Doctor of Ministry Degree I did a lot of reading about literature and the different kinds of stories that make up literature. We humans are story tellers, and listening to stories is as old as our Homo Sapiens family. In fact, Yuval Noah Harari in his amazing book, Sapiens, says that the ability to tell stories is what enabled our branch of the evolutionary tree to prevail over against other branches like the Neanderthals and Denisovan man. The weaving of stories can draw large groups of people together and unite them in a way that simple speech like, Food there! Or, Danger there! which apes and other animals can vocalize, cannot.. And large unified groups have a selective advantage over small groups or clans. Story telling is what enabled us to prevail. (Click here to continue reading.)
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How is your summer going? Well, I hope. Gail and I have had a wonderful summer, beginning with a trip to England, Scotland, and Wales in mid-June with our daughter and her husband and their two boys, who are now twelve and fifteen years of age. Thanks to your kind pastor, Bill Rolland, we spent two glorious days in his house in Anstruther, Scotland, just fifteen minutes south of St. Andrews. We savored the best fish and chips in all the United Kingdom from the Anstruther Fish Bar and Grill and had a putting contest in the Himalayas, the hilly 18 hole putting course in St. Andrews which brought more laughs than a night of stand-up comedy. I had a chance to play the Eden Course at St. Andrews for the first time late in the afternoon when all the contours of the links are highlighted by shadow. What great fun! (Click here to continue reading.)
One of my favorite authors is Frederick Buechner. I wonder if any of you are familiar with his work. This particular Sunday of the church year, Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent and a new church year, was a pivotal day in Buechner’s life. He had grown up in an upper middle-class family on the East Coast, attended a fine prep school, the Lawrenceville School in Princeton, New Jersey, and then attended Princeton University. At the tender age of twenty-three he wrote a novel that received rave reviews and sold briskly and marked his place as a new talent on the literary scene. His second novel was as big a flop as his first was a success. Nonetheless, he carried on and began work on a third novel while living in New York City. (Click here to continue reading.)
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