Sunday, May 11, 2025
Sermon: "Switching Gears", Acts 1:1-11 (May 11, 2025)
Before I get started, I want to assure you that I didn’t wear this hilarious shirt by accident, and I promise that I’ll explain it later.
I should also probably take a moment to acknowledge that it’s not, in fact, Ascension Sunday yet, even though we just read the story of Christ’s ascension a moment ago. Normally, the Church celebrates Christ’s Ascension into heaven forty days after Easter (following the timeline of the original events), and we’ve still got three weeks to go. But I figured that since I won’t be with you on June 1 and I’ve given our guest preachers carte blanche to preach on whatever they want, it was worth making sure that we touched on this important story at least once.
And if I’m being entirely honest, it also feels like an especially fitting scripture reading for today. At the risk of comparing myself too favorably to Jesus, I can only imagine that the experience of the disciples here must have been similar to the experience of a congregation watching their pastor prepare to leave on Sabbatical. Both events represent significant shifts in the community’s life; confusion, uncertainty, and even fear are all understandable reactions. Even if you’re NOT experiencing any of these emotions, it’s undeniable that the next three months will be very different from the past six years. Just as the Ascension was for the disciples, the three months that I’ll be on my Sabbatical will be a time of transition and adjustment for all of us: a time of switching gears.
Labels:
Acts,
Ascension,
gears,
New Testament,
Sabbatical,
Sermon,
switching gears,
tootsie rolls
Monday, May 5, 2025
Sermon: "Eyes on the Prize", Acts 6:8-7:2a; 7:44-60 (May 4, 2025)
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