This Preaching Thing

(A Deacon Ordination sermon based on John 21:15-19 for Sunday, June 23, 2013) “Fall and call go together” [Christopher Bamford, “The Gift of the Call,” Parabola , Fall 2004, in Philip Zaleski, ed., The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), p. 4]. That’s why we don’t expect you to be perfect. That’s why we do expect you to be you. So what do we get in getting you? We get sinners, that’s what we get. There’s no point in denying it or dancing around it; we’re ordaining sinners and installing sinners as deacons today. The rest of us are sinners, too, so what we really have here are sinners ordaining sinners. And that’s good news. It’s good news because it means that we are all in this together; we are a bunch of sinners who have stumbled into the grace of God and who are by that grace trying to follow Jesus and trying to serve a broken world. Simon Peter can serve as a role model for us. I can’t help but wonder if, as happy as...

(A sermon based on Luke 2:41-52 for Father's Day 2013) I recently, on two separate occasions, gave our children the opportunity to express their opinion, now that they are adults, of what kind of father I have been to them. I did so with fear and trembling. Our son Joshua said, “Well, Sara and I are both reasonably well-adjusted and are doing what we think we are supposed to do. I’d say you did fine.” Our daughter Sara said, “You're the best. The absolute best. And I'll stick to that as long as you keep making your chicken wings.” I took their insights to heart and I felt fine. What I always wanted was what all decent parents want: for my children to discover who God made them to be and to spend their lives being that. I am grateful that they are doing that and that they recognize the truly finer things in life, too. And that they have a sense of humor. After all, we parents believe that our children are a gift from God, that they are blessed by God with u...

(A Communion meditation based on Genesis 18:1-14 for Sunday, June 9, 2013) So far as Abraham could tell, they were just three men who happened by, but he still fell all over himself being hospitable to them. He asked them in, encouraged them to put their feet up, and, along with Sarah, fed them a great meal. He welcomed them into his home, to his table, and into his life. As a result, Abraham was included in a conversation that made quite a difference in his life for in that conversation Abraham was told that at that same time the next year Sarah would give birth to a son. After much waiting and hoping, there would be a son of Sarah and Abraham; his name would be Isaac. So Abraham gave to his guests but he also received from them. And in some mysterious way, the Lord God was present in the meal outside Abraham and Sarah’s tent. Many years later there lived in the town of Jericho another “son of Abraham” whose name was Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a reject, a small man made e...