Wedding Sermon for June 23, 2018

This one is a little out of the ordinary. It's for a wedding, and the readings for it were chosen (mostly) from outside the Christian canon. But no worries; God's grace is so great that anything can proclaim it.

Readings:
     The Art of a Good Marriage, by Wilferd Arlan Peterson
     Four Elements of True Love, by Thich Naht Hanh (In the link, it's #4)
     Genesis 12:1-5a

God came to Abram, we are told, and gave him some instructions. “I want you to take everything you have, and move to a new land.” Abram seems to have had a gift of being able to talk to God in a way that most of us can’t. He probably answered by saying, “And which land is this, then? How do I get there? Can I get directions? Maybe put it into Google Maps?” And God’s answer? “You’ll know it when you get there.” And so they set out, traveling across the fertile crescent, north and west and south again around the desert land in the middle east, to settle finally in a beautiful land called Canaan. A grand and powerful story.

Sermon for June 17, 2018

Sermon on Season After Pentecost, Lectionary 11(B) - Mark 4:26-34

The story of Don Quixote seems, on the surface, to be simply a fantasy meant to delight, a story about a man who has lost his mind and come to believe that he is a knight, windmills are giants, and his peasant neighbor is a squire. But it contains a profound truth, one that I know well, since I had the privilege of playing that peasant neighbor, Sancho Panza, in the musical version of the story, my freshman year of college.

Sermon for June 10, 2018

Season of Pentecost, Proper 5(B) - Genesis 3:8-15, Mark 3:20-35

Every day we gather at 1:45 for prayer. And despite being an ordained pastor with eight years of experience and two Master’s degrees in religion, I have no idea what is going on.

Let me explain. I’m working to become a professor, someday teaching Old Testament. I earned a Master of Theology degree at Princeton in May, and am spending my summer at Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan to get the Jewish perspective on our shared scriptures. I wasn’t sure, at first, about being a gentile, living and studying in a Jewish community, but I’ve been accepted with open arms. The classes are interesting, and the professors aren’t afraid to explain what’s going on when the Christian in the room doesn’t get it. I’ve been invited to see movies with new friends and to share in Sabbath dinner. I am always welcome at even the most Jewish of events going on. I am as much a part of the community as everyone else.

Sermon for June 3, 2018

I guess you could say that I am a country boy. In rural Pennsylvania where I grew up, I could look out my bedroom window and see corn and soybeans growing. Cars would go by, but it was mostly pretty quiet. This summer, however, I’m living in Manhattan, on the upper west side, just off Broadway. My bedroom window overlooks traffic at all hours of the day, and I find myself struggling to fall asleep at night because of the noise. The city is an angry place, and my cornfield sort of ways have not quite adapted yet to a world where everyone is in a big hurry to get to whatever miserable place they are headed next. I am evidently the only one around who knows the words “excuse me.” I have heard more racial slurs in a week than in the rest of my life. And I do not find myself wondering why everyone is in such an awful mood all the time. Instead, I find myself wondering how long it’s going to take before I wind up that way.