Lent 2B: Quite Openly
It is a familiar story in the gospel of Mark. Jesus and the disciples at Caesarea Philippi. That question from Jesus; “who do you say that I am?” Peter’s confession; that’s what the tradition calls Peter’s response to Jesus. The always puzzling Messianic secret; Jesus sternly ordering the disciples not to tell who he was….
Easter: Soar We Now
Anyone who has ever taken a class in physics may remember Newton’s laws of motion. Even if you’ve never taken physics or specifically had to memorize Newton’s laws, you’re probably familiar with the basics. One law is the simple observation that an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless some outside force acts…
Easter: Enough
Dan Brown’s suspense novel, The DaVinci Code, was a New York Times #1 bestseller for over a year, selling in the end millions of copies. As some of you may recall from The DaVinci Code, Mary Magdalene occupies a central place in the narrative. Yes, the same Mary who figures in so importantly in the…
Palm Sunday: Salvation’s Hospitality
In the summer of 1991 my wife and I spent some time traveling in Germany. One of our stops was a two-day visit to a pastor and his wife in Wittenberg. At that time, the fall of the Berlin Wall was still a very recent event. What had been the communist-dominated East Germany was still…
Lent 5A: Neither Bang Nor Whimper
As Time magazine recently pointed out, two famous twentieth century poets both weighed in on the subject of the universe’s end. Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire / Some say in ice. / I hold with those who favor fire.” On the other side T.S. Eliot wrote, “This is the…
Lent 4A: The Gift of Sight
Years ago in the weeks following the September 11 attacks, perhaps some of you noticed something that a number of people were detecting during that dark and difficult time: namely, there was a lot of axe-grinding going in many circles. People from both sides of the political spectrum, and from most all points in between,…
Lent 3A: Welling Up
Some years ago, writer Eugene Peterson found an analogy for modern spiritual quests in, of all things, a Winnie the Pooh story. In one of the many tales from the Hundred-Acre Woods, Christopher Robin and company decide to set out one day in search of the North Pole. At one point along the way, young…
Disappointed with Jesus
Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? That’s one of the most haunting questions in the whole Bible. And look who’s asking it. John the Baptist, that tough, seasoned prophet who preached repentance. John the Baptist who stood up to the Pharisees and Sadducees out there in…
Christmas A: Flutter of Angels
The Advent world is a world of angels. It’s a world alive with the flutter of angels. Our world, in contrast, is inhospitable to angels. It seems totally void of angels. This discrepancy between the Advent world and our world is the thought behind H. G. Well’s story, “The Wonderful Visit.” One day, so this…
Sermon Manuscripts
Here at the Center for Excellence in Preaching we strive to be very ecumenical in both the resources we offer and the audience in the wider Church that we seek to reach. But our Center is a part of Calvin Theological Seminary where—like any number of other seminaries—we have for many years been using Paul Scott Wilson’s The Four Pages of the Sermon as our homiletical teaching method.
Many of our alumni seek to utilize the deep structure and the “grammar” of Four Pages in their weekly preaching. But some of those same pastors have asked for help in the form of sample sermons that try to wield Wilson’s model well. The manuscripts labeled Four Pages: (sermon title) are demonstrations of this model of sermon-writing. There are also sample sermons for seasonal enrichment. These are labeled with the liturgical season and sermon title.
We hope these sermons are both instructive and inspirational!