My sermon on Jesus’ parable of the pharisee and the tax collector hinges on a re-translation by Amy-Jill Levine that opened up the story for me. __________________________ In the early days of Saturday Night Live, one of the repeating characters was a priest named Father Guido Sarducci. He was not a priest of course, but…

My sermon this week is from a parable of Jesus often called “The Persistent Widow.” It is not one of my favorites but seemed worth wrestling with. What I found is the title shares the story short. There’s a lot going on in the parable worth talking about. _____________________________ I grew up in a family…

We almost had a show-and-tell sermon this morning. I seriously thought about bringing Elena, one of our Schnauzer rescue pups. We have had her almost two years, though we got her thinking it was a hospice situation and she would only be with us for a couple of months. We were going to be her…

It’s getting down to crunch time in the baseball season, which means it doesn’t take much for my sermon to intersect with the Red Sox. Here’s what I said on Sunday. ________________________________ In the fall of 2004, I was the Associate Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Hanover, Massachusetts, which is about halfway between…

Last week’s lectionary passage is one of my favorites. Here’s what I had to say on Sunday. __________________________ Right after Ginger and I got back from our trip to Durham last month, we noticed a plant that had sprung up along our back fence line. It was not there because we planted it, but since…

I think this is the first time that thinking about prayer took me to both Robert Frost and ice hockey. Here’s my sermon for this week. ____________________________ My twelfth grade English teacher Ms. Morse is responsible, in part, for my love of poetry—particularly the poems of Robert Frost. When Ginger and I lived in Boston,…

Mary and Martha have been compared for years. Maybe there’s a different way to look at it. ___________________________ I find it interesting that Luke tells the story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha’s house right after the parable of the Samaritan that we read last week. We don’t have any real indication that one…

The parable of the Samaritan who stopped is well-worn and often told, thanks to the Revised Common Lectionary. This year, I found him in the supermarket parking lot, straightening the carts. Thanks for reading. _________________________ We reveal a lot about ourselves in a supermarket parking lot. Specifically, we reveal a lot by what we do…

I am playing catch up after forgetting to post my sermons from the last couple of weeks. The title of this sermon came from the first words of The Message version of Galatians 6:1-10: “Live creatively, friends.” Thanks for reading. ____________________________ I love the way our passage for today begins: “Live creatively, friends.” These words…

For the past four summers, as most of you know, I have spent time in the north of Ireland as a part of peace retreats intending to learn about and from the centuries of division in that land that culminated in violence the refer to as The Troubles and then in the Good Friday Agreement,…