Sermon: “Foe or Friend”, Luke 6:1-11 (February 2, 2025)

By this time in Luke’s gospel, Jesus has been going around teaching and healing for a while now. He’d made quite a name for himself, to the point that people were actively seeking him out to hear what he had to say and be cured of illness and disease. But the attention wasn’t all positive – Jesus had also attracted a fair amount controversy and conflict, as we read a couple of weeks ago. And it appears that by this point, one particular group of Pharisees have had about all they can take: upon observing Jesus healing on the Sabbath, Scripture tells us that “They were furious and began talking with each other about what to do to Jesus.”

Liturgy: Healing on the Sabbath, Luke 6:1-11 (February 2, 2025)

 *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.*

Hymns

Hymn GTG #393, “O Day of Rest and Gladness” 

Hymn GTG #61, “Your Law, O Lord, Is Perfect” 

Sermon: “What Sabbath Actually Is”, Isaiah 58:5-7, 13-14/Luke 13:10-17 (August 21, 2022)

---------------------------------------------
Today, we’re getting not only a lesson in theology, but in internet culture, as well! This is a meme format that first emerged in 2012 but seems to have had a slight resurgence over the past couple of years.[1] The idea of the meme is to humorously portray a profession by visually depicting how different people or groups view it through six different images. The default categories are usually something along the lines of “What my friends think I do/what my parents think I do/what society thinks I do/what I think I do/and what clients or customers think I do”. It almost always ends with “What I actually do”, which often serves as a punchline of sorts. For example, in a version about teachers, the last frame might be a desk covered in paperwork; in one about a customer service specialist, a bottle of aspirin; in one about a nurse, a comically large mug of coffee. (I highly encourage you to google your own profession or hobby; odds are there’s already at least one version of this meme already in circulation.)

Sermon: “Why We Rest", Exodus 20:8-11/Deuteronomy 5:12-15 (October 4, 2020)

---------------------------------------------------------

If I were the betting type, I’d bet that every single one of you already knew that the Ten Commandments come from the Bible. I even suspect that many of you already knew that you can find them in the book of Exodus (or if you didn’t know, you could figure it out based on context clues). But how many of you knew that these laws could be found in TWO different places in the Bible? Raise your hand if you knew. I’m not talking one full list and one quick recap; I mean that the Ten Commandments are recounted, in full, both in Exodus AND again in Deuteronomy. In Exodus, they’re given directly from God to Moses on Mount Sinai; in Deuteronomy, Moses is passing them along to the people.