Ephesians 1:3-14
Christmas 2A
Christians know that God didn’t create us to “eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die.” Yet that popular philosophy raises a number of interesting questions. It makes us wonder how God’s people should evaluate the purpose of our lives. How do we think about why God has put us here? Something in a…
Romans 8:6-11
Lent 5A
[…] to show up. And by grace and in Christ, it most assuredly does! Illustration Idea Back in Kindergarten, maybe you did a craft in school as a Christmas present for your parents. Perhaps it was a papier mâché ornament for the Christmas tree. Years later maybe you took another look at that ornament: it’s […]
Four Pages: The Journey Is Too Much
[…] them back together with the glue of grace. I once read a story about Tommy, a little six-year-old boy in Kindergarten. For a couple of weeks before Christmas all the children in the class worked on a very special present for their parents and on the final day of school before the Christmas holiday […]
Hebrews 2:10-18
Christmas 1A
Near the beginning of measured time, God created the heavens and the earth. God also created our first parents for fellowship with each other and the Lord, as well as to help care for what God makes. Adam and Eve, however, chose to do the one thing God explicitly asked them not to do. Then…
Psalm 148
Christmas 1A
Some years back at a worship service we used St. Francis of Assisi’s poem “Canticle of the Sun” as part of a responsive reading. There was, alas, a slight typo in the bulletin that made it sound at one point as though we were worshiping Mother Earth. This led a rather conservative member of my…
Ephesians 1:3-14
Christmas 2B
Christians know that God didn’t create us to “eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die.” Yet that popular philosophy raises a number of interesting questions. It makes us wonder how God’s people should evaluate the purpose of our lives. Something in a sermon by the Rev. Fleming Rutledge stimulated my thinking about that…
Isaiah 64:1-9
Advent 1B
[…] you come.” O Come, O Come, Immanuel….” Perfect! Except that many people don’t want to hear something like this the Sunday after Thanksgiving and four weeks before Christmas. What we want is the holidays, good cheer, “a merry little Christmas.” Especially this year, a year devastated by COVID, riven by racial division, and roiled […]
Psalm 148
Christmas 1B
No moment on the annual calendar gets more associated with popping champagne corks than New Year’s Eve. So it is appropriate that on this last Sunday and day of 2023 the Lectionary directs us to Psalm 148, which is in its own way a fizzing and frothing bottle of champagne in word form. It is…
Luke 2:22-40
Christmas 1B
We have a number of characters in this story. There’s the rather passive Jesus, who is brought to the Jerusalem for a dedication by Mary and Joseph. Then there’s Simeon and Anna, seemingly fixtures of the temple community. What links all of these characters is one trait: piety. Specifically, each participant’s piety is borne from…
Search Results: christmas