Sermon: "Bound By Love", Ruth 1:1-17 (October 15, 2023)

Just over a week ago, the world reacted in horror when Hamas, the so-called “Islamic Resistance Movement” within Palestine, violently and unexpectedly attacked Israel. Although this specific strike came as a surprise, it was far from an isolated incident: it’s just the latest event in the long and complicated history of conflict between Israel and Palestine, dating back to over 70 years ago. Yet even though there are many factors in play (including the fact that between 40-50% of the Palestinian and Israeli people oppose Hamas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, respectively)[1],[2] many people see this struggle as a black and white issue: one side is right, and the other side is wrong. The global community seems to be just as starkly divided as the nations that are actually involved in the conflict. Each nation has done whatever moral calculus makes sense to them, and they’ve chosen a side.

Sermon: “A War By Any Other Name”, Isaiah 1:10-20; 2:1-5 (November 20, 2022 - Reign of Christ Sunday)

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I’m going start today’s sermon with a confession and a story. The confession is that the scripture readings we just heard were mostly not what the Narrative Lectionary assigned for today. The bulk of today’s assigned readings (which would have been from Isaiah 36 and 37, in case you want to look it up later) recount a wartime exchange between the kings of Assyria and Judah (the southern kingdom of Israel). But half of the words in these passages are difficult-to-pronounce names, and I found it challenging to keep all the characters, their locations, and the metaphors straight. So instead of forcing the liturgist to suffer through all of this, I’ll just summarize it for you myself instead. Storytime!