Sermon: “Recipe for Repentance: Looking Forward”, Mark 11:1-11 (March 28, 2021--Palm Sunday)

(This is the sixth sermon in our Lenten series, "Recipe for Repentance". Previous sermons can be found here, here, here, and here, and the Ash Wednesday message can be found here.)

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It’s so good to be back worshiping with you again. I wasn’t in worship last Sunday because, as many of you know, I’d just gotten my second COVID vaccine on Saturday and, given all the horror stories I’d heard about side effects, Session and I decided that it made the most sense for me to stay home the next day. As it turned out, my side effects weren’t all that bad—a headache was the worst of it—so I took the opportunity to look ahead and work on our worship videos for Holy Week.

Sermon: “Recipe for Repentance: Reorientation”, John 3:14-21 (March 14, 2021)

(This is the fourth sermon in our Lenten series, "Recipe for Repentance". Previous sermons can be found here, here, and here, and the Ash Wednesday message can be found here.)

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I remember the first time I saw someone holding a “John 3:16” sign at a sporting event. I was probably in middle school or thereabouts. I asked my parents why, out of all the verses in the Bible, someone would choose to hold up that one, and they said something like, “Because that verse is a summary of the whole gospel message.” After I looked it up (I wasn’t yet the biblical prodigy you see standing before you today), I was puzzled. I mean, yes, John 3:16 by itself is technically a spoiler for the rest of the story, but as far as I could tell with my limited preteen theological prowess, it wasn’t really communicating anything new, insightful, or uniquely compelling. Why, I wondered, would someone attempting to evangelize to a (presumably) non-Christian audience choose THIS verse to represent the Good News?

Sermon: “Recipe for Repentance: Reflection”, Exodus 20:1-17 (March 7, 2021)

(This is the third sermon in our Lenten series, "Recipe for Repentance". Previous sermons can be found here and here, and the Ash Wednesday message can be found here.)

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“That’s it; you’re in time-out!” How many of us have heard these words and experienced the pure panic of a child knowing that they’re in big trouble? Although we usually thought of it as a punishment in the moment, a time-out should more accurately be considered a “behavior modification strategy”. Unlike grounding, in which privileges are revoked as a method of negative reinforcement, a time-out is intended to remove a person from their normal environment and give them the opportunity to reflect on their bad behavior. After all, you can’t express remorse or make it right if you don’t understand what you’ve done wrong. In the words of parents since time immemorial, you’re put into time-out in order to “think about what you’ve done.”