Category Archives: Time after Pentecost

Two Cents Worth – Sermon on Mark 12:38-44

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November 11, 2018

Have you ever given your opinion about something, and then said, “That’s just my two cents worth”? It’s a way of letting the person you’re talking to know that this is just your own opinion, and the listener is free to disagree. When we add our “two cents worth” to a discussion, we let people know that, “yeah, this is what I think, but I could be wrong. I’m no expert. Take it for what it’s worth – not much, maybe.”

Do you remember “sound bites”? We don’t hear about them much anymore, maybe because sound bites have been replaced with tweets. Continue reading →

Whoever You Are: Blind Faith – sermon on Mark 10:46-52

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October 24, 2021
Video

The story of Blind Bartimaeus acts as a bookend in Mark’s gospel. It closes out a long section that began back in chapter eight, when Jesus healed another blind man – only that time, Jesus had to spit twice before the man could see. This whole section has come to its climax here in chapter ten, where we’ve been walking with Jesus this month. The itinerary Jesus and his disciples have been following, as they travel from Galilee to Jerusalem, has been pretty … eventful.

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Whoever You Are: Greatest & Least – Sermon on Mark 10:35-45

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October 17, 2021
Video

I had a friend who worked really hard at appearing humble. In public, he was always putting himself down, always declining praise when he’d done something good. But in private, it was a different story.

One time he told me of a particularly generous thing he’d done for someone we both knew. And then he said, “But of course, I don’t want anyone to know it was me. Jesus says to give alms in secret.” And I thought, “but you just told me.” Continue reading →

Whoever You Are: First and Last – sermon on Mark 10:17-31

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October 10, 2021
Video

Have you ever held a garage sale? Somewhere in the process of getting all the items ready for the sale, did you ask yourself “How on earth did I accumulate so much stuff?” Our culture encourages consumerism – advertisers play on our emotions to convince us we really need something that, to be honest, we probably don’t need at all.

Mary Hunt writes a newspaper column called “The Everyday Cheapskate,” and she has a saying I really like. I think many of us could put it on our bathroom mirrors to read as we brush our teeth every morning: Continue reading →

Whoever You Are: Broken and Blessed – sermon on Mark 10:2-16

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October 3, 2021 (World Communion Sunday)
Video

We are beginning a new series this week, which will take us through the tenth chapter of the gospel according to Mark. Since we’ve been focused on the letter from James, we might need a little context to help us re-focus on the gospel story. Jesus is on the move. Several themes will appear in chapter ten. These themes are like threads in a tightly woven tapestry, weaving together ideas that might seem at first glance to be disconnected, but when woven together, they form a perfect image of the Kingdom of God.

There’s the theme of walking – in Chapter 9, Jesus walks down from the mount of transfiguration, and then takes his disciples on a walk through Galilee so he can teach them privately about his coming death and resurrection. Which, by the way, is teaching they don’t understand, but they are afraid to ask him about it. Continue reading →

Faith Works: We Don’t Do That Here – Sermon on James 3:13 -4:3, 7-11a

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September 19, 2021
Video

A young musician was substituting for the principal clarinet in the Chicago Symphony. Wanting to make a good impression, she prepared her music carefully, memorized all the hard passages, and when the time came to take her place for her first rehearsal, she played her heart out, dramatically moving with the music and waving her clarinet expressively as she played.

When there was a pause in the rehearsal, she smiled at the player sitting next to her. But he frowned at her, and said, “we don’t do that here.” In the Chicago Symphony, the focus is on the music, not the drama.

We’ve been working our way through the book of James, and I’ve mentioned before that this book, even though it comes in the form of a letter, really has more in common with Old Testament Wisdom literature than Paul’s letters to the early church. James has encouraged us to accept all people without showing favoritism to the rich. He’s taught us to listen first and speak second, and when we do speak, to mind our tongues.

This is all part of becoming more like Jesus, that process we call discipleship. As we work our faith, our faith begins to work in us, and our focus is more and more on Jesus, not the drama. Continue reading →

Faith Works: Mind Your Tongue – Sermon on James 3:1-12

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September 12, 2021
Video

James has been teaching us how to work our faith in order to develop a faith that works. Just before today’s reading, he writes, “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” (James 2:26)

Our faith shows up in our work, what we do, how we live. But work without faith is just work. When our work is an expression of our faith, we grow in maturity, our words align with our actions, and our actions align with God’s will.

In today’s passage from the book of James, he dives a little deeper into the idea we heard a couple of weeks ago: “everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” (James 1:19) It’s that “slow to speak” part that can get us into trouble. When we let our tongues run ahead of us, whether we are being careless or intentionally hurtful, it damages our witness for Christ. Continue reading →

FaithWorks: Playing Favorites – Sermon on James 2:1-10

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September 5, 2021
Video

Have you ever needed to make a decision, and you just couldn’t decide? You’d looked at all the options, and there didn’t seem to be one right answer, one perfect solution. You just had to use your best judgment, so you could go forward.

We see it all the time in sports. The referee makes a call on a play that isn’t really clear from the sidelines, so they review it. And as the commentators in the booth discuss the slow motion video of the play from all possible angles, they can’t decide which way it should go, either. But the game has to go on. Everyone depends on the ref’s best judgment to make the final call.

We make judgments all the time. We make choices based on the best information we can gather. Sometimes those choices are good ones, and sometimes we make poor choices. Either way, every choice we make is a judgment call. But there’s a difference between judging and being judgmental.

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FaithWorks: The Implanted Word – sermon on James 1:17-27

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August 29, 2021
VIdeo

Tradition tells us that the author of the book of James was the brother of Jesus. James was not one of the original twelve disciples – in fact, we have no evidence he even believed his brother was the Son of God until after the resurrection. However, James quickly became a leader among the believers in Jerusalem. And let’s remember that the church in Jerusalem was the flagship church of the whole Christian movement, so James was an important figure in the church’s early development. Paul even submitted to his authority (Acts 15:13-21).

In the greeting of this letter, James addresses “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (1:1) so we can imagine that his intended audience includes Jewish followers of The Way who have fled from Jerusalem after the stoning of Stephen. Christianity was in its early stages; it was still considered a Jewish sect. Continue reading →

Stop Going to Church – sermon on Psalm 92:12-15

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August 26, 2018
Video available here.

One day, Pastor Craig* ran into a guy named Matt at the grocery store. Matt was buying groceries with his wife and their two sons, and when they saw pastor Craig, they were really excited. “Pastor Craig, we go to your church!” Pastor Craig said, “I’m glad you go to our church!” “Yeah, we go to your church! We go to your church!” They kept saying it again, and again, and again.

But then Matt pulled pastor Craig aside, and he said, “would you mind praying for me?” Usually when somebody asks me that, they have one prayer request. Matt had a whole laundry list. Continue reading →