This week’s sermon is a response to my reading not only Mark 1:29-39 but continuing to consider all of the first chapter as well as holding the questions I find there. The song that follows is a favorite hymn: “Come, Ye Disconsolate” by Samuel Webbe. _______________________ If I were to go back over my sermons,…
This week’s sermon takes its title from one of my favorite Guy Clark songs, “Come from the Heart,” which I sing as well. The church where I have been interim has some momentous decisions in the weeks and months to come, so the sermon takes a turn towards them at the end. The passage is…
Ginger and I celebrated the thirty-second anniversary of our first meeting this week. Not too long after that, she came over to my apartment for dinner and I had made peanut butter cookies—my mom’s recipe. I offered her one and she said, “You can make these?” I assured her the Nutter Butter people weren’t the…
It started in my dream the other night: I was looking at my phone as I wondered why I spend so much time looking at my phone. I rarely remember my dreams, so I came back to it as I was journaling this morning. The question is not a new one. The struggle is real….
My sermon this week comes from Mark 1:14-20 where Jesus calls four of his disciples. The song that follows is “The Summons” by John Bell, which I learned at youth camp with Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. ____________________________________ As a boy, I was fascinated by the story where Jesus told his disciples to go into…
Saturday morning means I get to have some fun making breakfast. The day starts early because I drive to Madison, Connecticut (once East Guilford) to meet a group of guys for coffee around 6:30. They have been meeting for twenty years and were kind enough to let me join in. For some reason, as I…
I love that the story of Samuel falls on MLK weekend, thanks to the lectionary. Here is where the two stories took me this week. _____________________________ Today is the second Sunday of Epiphany, if we mark time by the liturgical calendar. As we know, epiphany is a word that means “awakening,” and points us to…
Like many people preaching this week, the sermon I worked on before Wednesday is not the one I preached. The events in Washington sent me back to Matthew 2:1-12 for a second time—with a bit of a different emphasis. _______________________________ Yes, I know I am preaching on the same passage I read last week. I’m…
travelogue the depth of the darkness meant we had our choice of guides that’s what it means to stargaze to lose yourself in the night and then dash into the dark at the drop of a meteor but you can only go so far listening to someone whistle when you wish upon a star the…
Since we don’t have a service on Epiphany, my sermon for this Sunday turns to the sages following the star (Matthew 2:1-12). Here is what I found on the road with them. The song that follows is “May I Suggest” by Susan Werner–one of my favorites. _______________________________ Ginger and I moved to Boston about thirty…