This Preaching Thing

(A sermon based on Mark 9:30-37 for Sunday, October 27, 2013, following the presentation of a children's musical) Sometimes I stop to think about who I would really like to use my resources—my time, my energy, my money, my love—to help. I can’t do everything for everybody, after all, and I find myself thinking that I would really like to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, that’s a broad category. Even we able-bodied adults with reasonable intelligence, average common sense, and a decent work ethic sometimes need someone to reach out to hold us up or to help us out. I myself would not be standing here today had some gracious people not helped me out along the way when I was at the end of my rope. When I get to thinking that way, my thoughts always come back around to children and animals (particularly dogs and cats). I guess I think along the lines of that Carpenters’ song from the early 1970s that prayed, “Bless the beasts and the children for in this world they...

(A Communion Meditation based on 1 Corinthians 11:17-26 for Sunday, October 20, 2013) We have come together today to eat the Lord’s Supper. But, to use Paul’s phrase, have we come together “really to eat the Lord’s supper”? Put the emphasis where it belongs: Have we come together to eat the Lord’s supper? Paul said that it was not the Lord’s supper that the Corinthians had gathered to eat; it was something else, namely, it was their own supper. Now, to be fair, it was the practice in the early church to observe the Lord’s Supper—the memorial of bread and cup in which we still share today—in the context of a regular fellowship meal, as was the case on the Thursday night when Jesus established the practice for his followers. The members of the church would bring their own food and eat together; the Lord’s Supper would be observed as a part of the larger meal. So the problem was not that the people were enjoying a meal together—it was rather than they were not really enjoying...