Sermons

God’s Promises: Hope

Lessons: Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

Let’s face it: Most of us don’t want to spend a lot of time around prophets. Prophets don’t get invited to many parties. They have the remarkable ability to be pompous and whiny at the same time, which is just no fun to be around.  And they are almost always RUDE – and I mean all-caps rude, too. Can you imagine prophetic Twittering?  ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME. We’d hit the “unfollow” button without thinking twice.¹ 

Case in point: John the Baptist in this week’s Gospel text. I’m grateful to Ron Vestal for lending his personal gravitas to a character that can make us roll our eyes. John the Baptist is – a bit over the top.  We want to say, “John, relax! Maybe have glass of wine” – of course, not at MY party – someplace else, please.  But John the Baptist shows up at the party every Advent, looking and sounding like the prophet Elijah, preaching hellfire and brimstone, and repentance – an old-fashioned and decidedly judgmental word.  One minister reports that some years ago, after preaching on this text, a man came to him after worship and said, “Bummer!  Here we are getting all ready for Christmas and trying to get into the holiday spirit and you’re hammering away on stuff like repenting!” The minister asks, “Isn’t it kind of ‘Grinchy’ to talk about sin and self-examination when everyone is getting ready to have a ‘holly, jolly Christmas’”?² John the Baptist isn’t going to end up on too many Christmas cards. Read more →

God’s Promises: Peace

Lessons: Matthew 24:42-44; Isaiah 2:1-5

The fight happened a long time ago when they were still in school. But for both Tom and Eric Hoebbel, the fight was a defining event — the kind of family story that gets trotted out again and again because it seems to convey something important.  Tom, as the story goes, was just back from college, and the two brothers were in the kitchen late at night. They chatted aimlessly about school and sports. Then the conversation turned to money. Tom’s position was that money was inconsequential. He said, “I could just, you know, take out a dollar bill and burn it, and that wouldn’t really matter.”  But this idea horrified his brother. “Even if it’s only $1, you can still do stuff with it,” Eric said.  But Tom persisted, and to demonstrate his seriousness, he removed a dollar from his pocket and literally set it on fire.  At which point, by all accounts, Eric completely and utterly freaked out. “I was probably being held back,” Eric says. Read more →

The Color Purple

Lessons: Psalm 100, Philippians 4:4-13

This Thursday is Thanksgiving and we’ll be celebrating with our traditional ecumenical service here this year.  We’ve gathered on Thanksgiving with our brothers and sisters in the faith from St. Anselm Catholic Church and St. John’s Episcopal, taking turns hosting the service, for so many years no one remembers when we started.  Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because it hasn’t strayed quite as far from its original purpose as some of our other religious holidays.  Maybe that’s in part because its very name reminds us what the holiday is all about – giving thanks. Giving thanks to God. George Washington proclaimed “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many … favors of Almighty God.” And then it was Abraham Lincoln who established the last Thursday in November every year for that purpose: “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”^{1 Read more →}

What to Do While We Wait

Lessons: Isaiah 65:17-25; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Both of our Scripture passages this morning involve waiting, although I wonder whether waiting in 2010 bears any resemblance at all to waiting in Biblical times.  We live in the age of instant everything, and I’m guessing that makes us less tolerant of waiting.  My computer takes too long to start up in the morning. Gosh, I bet I must have to wait, like, two whole minutes.  Unacceptable! On the other hand, we have so many gadgets at our disposal that we’re rarely ever just waiting. A New Yorker magazine cover a year ago this month showed children on a big front porch, trick-or-treating. All the parents were standing on the sidewalk looking into their iPhones, each of their faces lit to a ghostly pallor.¹  We never have to have a wasted moment.  If we’re stuck in a traffic jam we can phone our friends – as long as we’re hands-free.  If we’re stuck waiting in line we can check email or catch up on Facebook. If we’re stuck waiting at the airport we can pull out our laptops and finish that big project, or even change our flight so we don’t have to wait. Waiting just isn’t what it used to be. Read more →

Power to the Saints

Lesson: Ephesians 1:11-23

Here in the Bay Area this past week we’ve been enjoying the reflected glory of our World Series champions.  It’s been refreshing to see people drawn together over something positive and joyful.  After our prayer at the weekly centering prayer gathering last week, even that normally contemplative group started swapping stories about the games, the parade, Brian Wilson’s beard, and how Tim Lincecum has not only skills but “the intangibles.”¹  Lincecum has been compared to Orel Hershiser, the skinny, right-handed pitcher who brought the Dodgers to a World Series championship in 1988. Lincecum has been called a “bulldog,” and Hershiser’s nickname was Bulldog.² 

There are a number of unusual stories about Orel Hershiser, who was a Presbyterian. Unusual for a baseball player, anyway. He once sang the Doxology on the Johnny Carson show. One of my favorite stories is told by Norman Corwin.  Corwin was watching a Dodgers’ game on TV and Hershiser threw a fastball that hit a batter. The camera was on a close-up of Hershiser, and Corwin could read his lips as he mouthed, “I’m sorry.”  The batter, taking first base, nodded to the pitcher in a friendly way and the game went on.  Corwin writes, “Just two words, and I felt better about Hershiser and the batter and the game all at once.  It was only a common courtesy, but it made an impression striking enough for me to remember after many summers.”³  Corwin learned a lesson in “the value of examples.” Read more →

Wellness

Lesson: Luke 17:11-19

It is 10-10-10, a binary day, and we have a story about ten lepers. One tenth of whom – ten percent of whom – return to say thank you. [Sing “Twilight Zone Theme Song”] 

We start with ten lepers.  Ten lepers living on the edge of town, separated from their families, their livelihood, all normal activities and company.  Ten lepers who have to shout a warning wherever they go that they’re unclean, because of the community’s dread of their disease.¹  The ten may or may not have had leprosy – what we know today as Hansen’s disease² – but they are lepers in the sense that they are the ultimate outcasts.

Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. When the ten lepers hear that Jesus the miracle worker is in the neighborhood, they come as close as they dare and call out. Jesus tells them to go to the priest, because just as it took a priest to confirm that someone had leprosy, it also took a priest to declare that someone was healed.³ As the lepers head off to do as Jesus tells them, they’re healed of their disease.  Imagine the joy, imagine the relief!  As soon as the priest gives the OK, they can return to their families, return to worship in the temple, return to being productive members of their community. Their marginal existence as outcasts is over! They were probably jumping and whooping and high-fiving all the way to the priest! Read more →

Enough Already

Lessons: Psalm 137:1-6; Luke 17:5-10

This past week the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life published the results of a survey designed to show how much Americans know about religion. Apparently we don’t know very much.  Dear oh dear; we failed the test.  Overall, atheists and agnostics scored better than religious people, although that’s a bit deceptive because atheists and agnostics actually didn’t outscore Christians on the questions pertaining to Christianity. One fact the New York Times found particularly gasp-worthy was that 53% of Protestants couldn’t identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation. OK – I wish everyone had the same interest in church history that I do. When we come to the church history part of a new members’ class, I have to curb my enthusiasm or the new members’ eyes glaze over.  But what does it really say if a Christian doesn’t know who Martin Luther was, not to mention some of the more obscure material on this test? Maybe it says she should have paid more attention in her high school history class, but does it say she isn’t a good Christian? Does it say she doesn’t have enough faith? Read more →

Go and Do Likewise

Lessons: Leviticus 19: 9-18; Luke 10: 25-37

Good Morning! What a joy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I’m happy to be the one to represent all the lives this congregation has impacted over the years.  Very happy indeed. Who wouldn’t want a trip to California, to visit friends, drink good wine and tell stories of hope? It’s nice work if you can get it, eh?

I’ve been planning this sermon for months, but I didn’t put the finishing touches on it until last night. I have been practicing what my mother would call “creative avoidance.” I have tremendous respect for pastors who do this every week. Those of you who know me, know that I have no problem speaking, but “preaching” always feels completely different. I was here, in San Anselmo, a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina – over three years ago – giving the Minute for Mission. I thanked you all for loving your neighbor as yourself and for sending help.  I asked for more help, and this congregation responded I told you then, that we could feel your presence in the pew beside us during worship in Mississippi, and I hardly even knew most of you.   Now, we have so many shared experiences that I feel like not only a member of your congregation, but even a part of some of some of your families.    Knowing that y’all that you all are here, cheering us on; interested in our progress;  still sending volunteer teams and financial support. You have no idea how much that means. Read more →

The Glory of God

Lesson: Luke 16:1-13

Introduction to the Scripture Reading: 

When Joanne asked me to preach today I read the lectionary text – Luke 16, verses 1 through 13 – and thought to myself: “You’ve gotta be kidding, Joanne. The parable of the Dishonest Estate Manager doesn’t make sense.”  Take a look at the text on page 60 of the NT in your pew Bibles and see what sense you can make of it.

INTRODUCTION

Parables of Rescue 

If you know what this parable means, you are wiser than most, because from the 2nd century on it has baffled the interpreters.   It’s clearly about the management of property and wealth, but why are the disciples encouraged to follow the example of a dishonest estate manager? And why is discounted debt repayment called “dishonest wealth?” Read more →

It All Ends in a Party

Lesson: Luke 15:1-10

I must have been younger than 4 years old when I got lost in the grocery store, because we only shopped at the Centro-Mart in Stockton until we moved to a new neighborhood right around my fourth birthday.  It’s easy for those of us over three or four feet tall to forget how the world looks when you’re eye-level with people’s kneecaps or belt buckles. It’s easy to lose track of the right pair of kneecaps.  Somehow I became engrossed in something in one aisle, and didn’t notice my dad had moved on to another aisle. And he didn’t notice that I didn’t notice. All of a sudden he was gone and I was lost. What I still remember is my sense of panic, and I ran and threw my arms around a pair of knees that I thought was my father but it wasn’t – so then in addition to being lost, I was humiliated – odd, isn’t it, that we feel shame even when we’re doing the best we can, the best that can be expected of us?  I don’t even remember what happened when either I found my dad or he found me – the panic at being lost is what I’ve retained ‘til this day. Read more →