Search Results: christmas

Advent Resources Year A

Advent – Year A A collection of Advent resources and Christmas resources including sermon ideas, whole sermons, sermon series ideas, and more. Home » You searched for christmas » Page 18 Advent Resources 2022 Quick Links First Sunday in Advent, November 27, 2022 Second Sunday in Advent, December 4, 2022 Third Sunday in Advent, […]

Read More

Acts 2:2-21

Pentecost B

Arguably it is harder to write a fresh sermon on Pentecost than on Christmas or Easter.  Those last two major events in redemptive history are proclaimed in multiple Biblical texts, so there are different angles to take on Christmas and Easter.  Pentecost, on the other hand, is reported in only one text, our text […]

Read More

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Proper 29A

A Shepherd In the US context, the day after Thanksgiving begins the Christmas season.  But this is one of those years where a fluke of the calendar means the church won’t be celebrating Advent (let alone Christmas) yet. We have one last Sunday in Ordinary Time. Liturgically, the first Sunday of Advent begins a […]

Read More

Matthew 1:18-25

Advent 4A

Comments, Questions, and Observations Oddly, we close out Advent this year with the birthing story. Matthew’s birth narrative doesn’t usually get much attention on Christmas day because it’s rather anti-climactic in comparison to the Luke’s—our tried and true Christmas story. As I discuss in the textual points section below, we don’t even get the […]

Read More

Luke 12:13-21

Proper 13C

Whether it’s Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life, prompts for charitable donations on Giving Tuesday (after the two biggest shopping days of the year), or the persistent sound of the Salvation Army bells ringing at storefronts, Christmas seems to be the season when we think […]

Read More

Isaiah 7:10-16

Advent 4A

On this Fourth Sunday of Advent, just 3 days away from Christmas, our reading from Isaiah 7 doesn’t seem very Christmasy.  Oh, it does if we focus only on verse 14 and the way our Gospel reading for today interprets it (Matthew 1:18-25). But if we read our text in its context, there’s no […]

Read More

Romans 8:22-27

Pentecost B

[…] readings for Pentecost, 2015?  As I pondered that, I recalled some wry comments made by Orthodox theologian Frederica Mathewes Green on the very different ways we celebrate Christmas and Easter.  “It’s that time of year again, when school children are coloring pictures of Jesus hanging from a cross, and shop owners fill their windows […]

Read More

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Advent 1C

[…] into the work of waiting.  The first Sunday of Advent can often feel like a rude awakening.  In the US context, those who hold to a no- Christmas-music-until-after-Thanksgiving have likely already heard their favorite carols blaring over the loudspeakers at the shopping mall.  They may have set up their trees at home or begun […]

Read More

Wide Awake (1998) – 1

[…] just about everything a ten-year old can find on the new resource called the internet.  And in pursuit of such, sometimes one does strange things at class Christmas parties. None provide an “answer” for Josh, and by spring he is resigned to admitting that God is not there, at least in any way that […]

Read More

The Innocents (2016)

[…] sure, close in its picture of God’s holy family and, yes, kingdom come. Maybe the film should end there, but there is a postscript of sorts.  At Christmas one nun arranges for a photograph of this new reality and sends it to the now long-absent physician rescuer who looks at it ever so wistfully, […]

Read More