Jesus says, "Healthy seeds reflecting God's desire are not planted in riches. Rather, they should penetrate the heart and be planted into people, especially people in need." Jesus warns that treasure invested for the self yields emptiness, while treasure invested in God’s work yields compassion. That is where we must plant the roots of our heart, so that in new life to come we won’t need to call home – the deeds we’ve done and the love we’ve given will testify that in God’s realm the poor and humble inherit the wealth of heaven. Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.” Thus spoke Jeremiah, the prophet of tears. Our brother of the ages, who lived so long ago, still rings down the years despite all the corners we’ve turned. Heartbreak is universal; across distance and time we are all united in the immutable truth of pain. Jeremiah was the inhabitant of a hard time – he was born in an era of persecution and captivity, a dreamer and an idealist in a time of broken hopes. Early in his life, he lived under the reign of a benevolent king who wanted to improve the quality of life for the Israelites, to bring peace and prosperity to the land. Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

It happened one day when Saul was traversing the cobblestone road to Damascus. He had just been to the High priest of the temple in Jerusalem for travel papers, hoping to find and take into custody any Christians he could find in Damascus. As he and his entourage made their way there, Saul was suddenly enveloped in a bright light, and heard a booming voice in the sky. “Saul, why do you persecute me?” it said. “Who are you…Lord?” Saul asked fearfully. “It is Jesus, who you are persecuting,” said the voice. “Now go on to Damascus and you will be told what you must do.” Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

Christianity is nothing if it doesn’t show itself in our relationships. The hallmark of New Testament religion is that individual believers become a church family through the relationship that Christ creates. We are to take care of each other, to involve ourselves in each other’s joys and hardships. If one member of the body suffers, then all suffer, this is the way of Christ Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

"What life have you if you have not life together?" Words of T. S. Eliot from his 1934 play The Rock point to the power of receiving life and nurturing life within the context of relating to other human beings. "There is no life that is not in community. And no community not lived in praise to God," wrote Eliot. When people become aware of the limitations of individualistic thinking and the drawbacks of disengagement from their neighbors, they hunger for alternatives. They yearn for something beyond themselves. Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

It is said that God enters through a broken heart. Just as Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for love, we too break open our hearts when we accept God. Some of us came to Jesus with our hearts already cracked apart – struck by some tragedy or epiphany that could only send us home to him. Others came to church and found that the love of Jesus was so powerful and so selfless that our hearts were torn by the beauty of it all. Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

Jesus talks of that fire in today’s scripture. From our twenty first century vantage point it might seem at first that Jesus is giving a real fire and brimstone speech to the crowds. Fire inspires great fear in us. It is a wild, uncontrollable force that consumes everything its path, destroying home and taking lives. It is associated with Lucifer and the great depths of Hades. We take great pains to avoid it and plan escape routes to get away from it when it flares up. Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

Isn’t interesting how the elements of life that we value the highest are in, in fact, invisible to us. You can’t hold faith…you can’t see love…you can’t taste creativity. We’re surrounded by nothing. Those of you who remember ninth grade science class will recall that everything which seems solid around us – what we call matter – is mostly empty space. I learned recently while reading John D. Barrow’s “The Book of Nothing” that 99% of the universe is what is called “dark matter…” a strange, unseen substance that holds everything together. Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

Here’s the funny thing about material wealth: I bet no matter who you ask, and no matter what they own, if you ask someone “would you like a little more money?” they’d almost certainly say “yes.” I plead guilty here, too. Even when we’re doing well with finances we’re all prone to worry about the possibility of tough times ahead. After all, when talking about money isn’t one of the first rules “save for a rainy day?” I don’t know where that maxim came from but I’m certain many a bank and investor has made a pretty profit from our fears that bankruptcy and ruin are right around the corner. Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

It was a regular work day when Libby, a housewife from Walland, TN woke up the morning alone for the first time in 27 years. My high school sweetheart and husband was gone. His leaving after 27 years was hard for her to understand, but God was faithful through the heartache those several months. Libby was sure that God was tired of the same words and tears every night when she would get in bed. Did He even care anymore? Libby wasn’t sure. She was desperate, a housewife with just a part time job, and little savings. Read this sermon...(Microsoft Word Format)

This week’s scripture reading, like so much of our Bible and indeed our faith, contains a mystery. Everyone loves a good mystery, a ball or yarn to unravel, a pile of clues, a needle in a haystack. We love the search, we savor the challenge of piecing together the puzzle and coming up with the solution. Perhaps best of all is the “whodunit” – the gripping tale of a detective or private eye on the hunt for an elusive villain. What is it that attracts us to these types of tales? Read this sermon (Microsoft Word Format)

Summertime is traditionally the season to “get away from it all.” Who among us doesn’t relish the thought of a trip to the beach, an afternoon spent lying in the sun and reading a good book? Who doesn’t like a nice picnic or BBQ, the savory smells of the grill, crunchy potato chips, and juicy watermelon? Some of like to get away to a tropical paradise, others enjoy the simple comfort of an afternoon breeze and a glass of lemonade. Read this sermon (Microsoft Word Format)

How can we understand the depth of our faith, and where we are on our walk with God? How can we discern the presence of the Holy Spirit in our churches and communities? And how can we be sure that we’re living “the good life?” If there were a list of the most important lessons of the New Testament, today’s scripture reading would surely be on it. Paul’s lesson to the Galatians, written around the year 45 A.D, contains some of the most vital teachings of our faith. Read this sermon (Microsoft Word Format)

Spiritual gifts are not often talked about at length because many of us associate them with divine powers like those Jesus or the apostles possessed. Indeed, we see Jesus casting out demons in today’s scripture reading, and we know that he also heals, prophesizes, raises the dead, and performs miracles. Likewise, the apostles, after receiving the Holy Spirit from the risen Jesus in Acts 2, also heal the sick, raise the dead, prophesize, and perform miracles. Are these the same gifts the Paul suggests all of us, as parts of the body of Christ, should have too? Read this sermon (Microsoft Word Format)

There’s another level of frightfulness in these words, a shade of meaning found in our churches and Sunday schools that paraphrases these words into something God might say. How many of us have grown up in a church where the priest or pastor rebuking us for our sins used words like this? “You must confess your sins to God,” they might have said, as if God was an angry parent waiting in the other room, ready to pounce on us for our imperfections, ready to punish us for falling short. Read this sermon (Microsoft Word Format)

Alfred Noel sat on the cold examination table nervously wringing his hands. Ten endless minutes had passed since the oncologist had left, bearing a stack of forms that he scrutinized anxiously through his round-rimmed glasses. Al’s blood test had come back with high level of PVA – indicating the possibility that somewhere in his body a clump of irregular cells, a tumor, had formed. The doctor had gone off to make a phone call for the results of a biopsy that would confirm or dismiss the presence of cancer in Al’s prostate gland, the most likely location in a man of his advanced age. Read this sermon (Microsoft Word Format)

Every day, we’re bombarded with information about our health. How we ought to be thinner or stronger, how we ought to eat more of this and less of that, how much exercise we should get, what pills we need to take to have better lives. There’s an enormous amount of dialogue around the issue of what defines a person as healthy and how they can reach that standard. A lot of this data is valid, based on research conducted by professionals who are working to improve the quality of our lives and help us make better choices for ourselves. Read this sermon (Microsoft Word Format)