Sermon: "Read the Room", Mark 2:18-22 (23-3:6) (January 14, 2024)

If you’re especially observant, you may have noticed that today’s scripture reading is a direct continuation from last week’s reading. The truth is that the Narrative lectionary actually included most of this passage in the lectionary for last week. It was a lot of scripture to tackle in one sermon, so I chose to focus on just the first half. But if I’m being ENTIRELY honest, I also didn’t want to deal with the second part – especially the metaphor of the new cloth/old clothes and new wine/old wineskin.

Liturgy: Pentecost - Acts 2:1-8/Romans 8:26-30, 38-39 (May 28, 2023)

*You are welcome to use or adapt any of my resources for free, but I ask that you provide proper citation AND comment on this post to let me know.*

*Call to Worship (based on Acts 2:1-3)

Leader: When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place.
People: Gather us in as your people, O God!

Sermon: “God’s Co-Op”, Genesis 2:4-9a, 15, 18-22/Mark 4:26-32 (June 13, 2021)

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God’s kingdom has been compared to a lot of things. According to Jesus, the Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field, a pearl of great price, yeast, a fishing net, a landowner hiring day laborers, a wedding banquet, servants entrusted with talents, and so on and so on. All revealing something important about God’s kingdom, and yet all (to our modern ears, anyway) rather enigmatic. (What actually *is* a talent, anyway?) If even the disciples struggled to extract meaning from these parables in their context, what hope do we have today?

Sermon: "Clear the Fog", Psalm 112:1-9/Matthew 5:13-20 (February 9, 2020)

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Today’s gospel reading, from the so-called “Sermon on the Mount”, is an important one. In it, Jesus offers a job description to all those who would call themselves his followers. As usual, his sermon is peppered with metaphors pulled from everyday life in the first century C.E., and given that he explicitly interprets those metaphors in verse 16, we can probably assume that Jesus expects all of his listeners to get what he’s trying to say.