Sermons

  • How Do We Go On?

    The tension and drama in today’s passage from Numbers doesn’t just come out of the blue. After leaving slavery in Egypt, the people have been wandering in the desert for more than forty years. Imagine, forty years of hunger and thirst, heat and cold, diseases and exhaustion. Forty years of eating flaky white stuff. Poisonous…

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  • Idols and Lies

    I want to invite you into the process of “thickening” our ancestral story from Exodus. Let’s begin by setting the scene. The people of Israel have arrived at Mount Sinai “at the third new moon” after being liberated from slavery in Egypt. It was at this same holy mountain in the desert wilderness that God…

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  • What a Covenant!

    Have you heard of the Valentine’s Bandit? Juana Summers of NPR reported last week: Something special happens the night before Valentine’s Day in Portland, Maine. Children and adults alike go to bed knowing that, while they are sleeping, the Valentine’s Bandit will strike, covering doorways, windows, and telephone poles across the city in bright red, paper…

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  • Raising Each Other

    I’m in middle school, 6th or 7th grade. The lights are darkened and a film is playing. The teacher has left the classroom for a few minutes. Teddy, the class clown, suddenly calls out, “Who farted?” The class giggles. Uh oh, I think. My stomach tightens and I try to look as small as possible. Bullies love to target me,…

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  • Unclean Spirits

    Here we are, already four weeks removed from the Epiphany of the infant Jesus, as revealed in the stars to astronomers from the east. It’s a season for reminding ourselves, or maybe revealing for the first time or in a new way, some of the characteristics of God’s hopes for us, described as God’s kingdom…

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  • Near and New

    “Mom, you have to watch this film, Fantastic Fungi!” So I did, and wow, it was a consciousness-raising experience. The film captures the odd yet captivating beauty of a dazzling array of mushrooms, all shapes, colors, and textures—unfurling and blooming in slow motion. It also portrays how these visible beings are only the tip of the iceberg, how…

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  • Mutual Invitation

    The first time I experienced “mutual invitation” was at the beginning of the pandemic when all our meetings migrated online. On Zoom it’s impossible to simply “go around the circle.” In mutual invitation, the facilitator frames the question and offers their response. They then invite the next person in. That person can speak, or pass…

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  • Belovedness Revealed

    The world’s longest running study of happiness began in 1938. Dr. Robert Waldinger presently directs this study and co-authored a book about it called The Good Life. Waldinger sums up the study’s results, saying that the strongest predictors of people’s health and happiness throughout life “were the warmth and the quality of their relationships with other people.” Scientifically speaking,…

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  • O Sing to God a New Song

    Our kids here at First Church have been learning the nativity story in a hands-on way. With hot glue, popsicle sticks, little wooden dolls, and scraps of fabric, they have crafted mangers and baby Jesuses, Marys and Josephs. On the way home from church after one of these creative sessions, my kid informed me that in her version…

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  • A Prophetic “Yes”

    I happened upon the website of Mac, a guy who likes to take long walks and write about them. At one time he thought he wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer, but then he realized that actually he aspires to live out of his van. One of his essays is titled “Why…

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  • It’s Not Your Story

     They had been sent by the Pharisees. Temple leaders from Jerusalem wanted to know more about John the Baptist, this person they couldn’t quite categorize: like a prophet, he wore a camel hair shirt and preached a message of repentance; like Elijah, the legendary prophet who preached reconciliation before disappearing into the clouds riding a…

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  • Prophetic Preparation

    My kid mentioned casually the other day that she has an emergency bag packed up in her room. This statement caused her parents’ ears to perk up. “What are you preparing for?” we asked. “Are you mad at us? Are you going to run away?” we teased. “Oh,” she responded, “No, it’s in case there’s…

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  • Prophetic Grief

    “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” I learned this week that the Hebrew verb, qāraʿtā, almost always refers to the ritual practice of rending a garment, which, in biblical culture, is an expression of mourning.[1] So the prophet is not pleading for God to intervene on earth and fix things for us. He is…

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  • Expectation

    The wise and funny Anne Lamott says:  Expectations are resentments under construction: set the expectations bar as low as you can! Write badly for an hour! Try not to hit any pedestrians; fill up at the gas station and then take the nozzle out of the gas tank before driving off. (X, August 17, 2020) …

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  • Staying Awake

    I have a confession to make. I suspect that I would be labeled foolish by the writer of the gospel of Matthew. Because if I were one of the bridesmaids from today’s reading, I can almost guarantee that I would have forgotten my oil. Several people in this room can attest to my forgetfulness: Brad…

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  • How We Belong

    In her article “The Great Reversal” historian of religion Diana Butler Bass points out that for centuries, the church has placed a primary emphasis on belief. The first step has been to decide what we believe and then determine how that belief asks us to behave and then finally, to solidify our belonging—to make a…

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  • Communities of Integrity and Authenticity

    Last week at this time I was lucky to be at a gathering in Cleveland, OH. Now, depending on your personal history with the great city of Cleveland, you may or may not find it surprising that I consider myself “lucky” to have spent time there, but for people connected to the United Church of…

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  • Christ as Common Ground

    Earlier this year, the Washington Post published several stories of Indian boarding school survivors. Dora Brought Plenty recalls: “[Two men in black suits] came toward me, grabbed me by my little arms, jerked me up out from the desk, out the door, to a black car.” She was 6½ years old and too terrified to ask who…

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  • Be Like Jesus

    In today’s reading from Philippians, Paul is quoting an ancient hymn used in the worship of the earliest Christian communities. This “Christ Hymn” begins: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” “Mind” is an inadequate translation of a Greek word, phroneo, that has no real parallel in English. One New…

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  • Forgiving Ninevah

    How can you not love the story of Jonah? It’s one of the Bible’s Greatest Hits, and for good reason: God is the main character, of course, but a complicated one, who alternates between threats of destruction and forgiveness. There’s Ninevah, a bad guy turned good. Then there’s Jonah, who in this story may fit…

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