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Broken Hip

  Friends, today in our Old Testament reading, we have one of my favorite kinds of Bible stories to preach on: a really weird one. I adore how this story didn’t come off weird in antiquity, and I and it’s a fun one to look at because of how our modern eyes see it! So, here we have it: the time Jacob got in an all night long wrestling match with an angel, and emerged with a name change and a bad hip. Perhaps the oddest part about this story is that it’s picking up in a rare, relatively dull moment in Jacob’s story. Wrestling with an angel is far from the strangest thing Jacob’s done. First, as a young man, he was making a really delicious sandwich, and his older brother, Esau, came inside after a long day of manual labor, was famished, and had to have some of that BLT. Jacob’s response? “Sure, you can have a bite of my sandwich–if I can have your birthright.” Well that escalated quickly. Jacob’s relationship with Esau only got worse from there. On their father, Isaac’s, death bed, t...
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Half Truths, Part 4: God Said It, I Believe It, that Settles It

  Friends, we’re now in the fourth part of this five part sermon series I put together based on a book titled Half Truths by a United Methodist colleague named Adam Hamilton. In Half Truths, Hamilton presents five different Christian cliches, platitudes we spout off too often to one another, often when we’re going through a hard time, or we know someone else who is. Many of us even believe these cliches are scriptural, but they aren’t. We’re looking at the limitations of these phrases, and what we might replace them with. The cliche we’re looking at this week is the only one in this book that I’ve actually never heard anyone say: “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” This is simply a cultural difference between me and Hamilton. This is the longer way to say a cliche I’ve heard many times, one I suspect you’ve heard, too: “the Bible says __ in black and white.” But, before we get into the shortcomings of that phrase, first, many words about that Psalm I just asked our poor l...
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Half Truths, Part 3: God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle

  Friends, today we’re up to the third of five weeks of this sermon series I’ve put together based on a book called Half Truths by a Methodist Pastor named Adam Hamilton. In this book, Hamilton has us look at five different Christian cliches. Phrases we say a lot, especially in times of grief, that many of us think are in the Bible, that aren’t, at least not the way we rattle them off. This week, we’re looking at the phrase “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” Now, to the credit of those of us who have said this phrase, either while we were going through a hard time, or to console a loved one who was struggling, this sentence is in the Bible…but only kinda sorta. We’ve changed the words, and, in so doing, significantly changed the original intent. The closest version of “God won’t give you more than you can handle” can be found in 1 Corinthians 10: 13: “ No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond...
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Half Truths, Part 2: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves

  Friends, we’re now in part 2 of 5 of a sermon series that I’m basing on a book called Half Truths , written by a Methodist pastor named Adam Hamilton. In this book, Hamilton has us look at five Christian cliches that serve a purpose, and can help in limited doses, but that also tend to do harm. This week we’re looking at “God helps those who help themselves”. Of the five cliches Adam explores in the book, this is the one that folks are most certain must be in the Bible somewhere. A study done in the early aughts by the Barna Group revealed that most folks on the street–8 in 10–think this phrase is in the Bible, and many swear it’s one of the Ten Commandments. When pressed further on where in the Bible this phrase must be, respondents to that Barna Group study said “uh…did Jesus say it?” Even when respondents had no idea where in the Bible this phrase shows up, they still insisted it was very important to Christian faith. You gotta pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, right? I...
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Half Truths, Part 1: Everything Happens for a Reason

  Friends, today I’m starting a new sermon series, where I’ll be drawing from a book titled Half Truths by an author named Adam Hamilton. Adam is a fellow United Methodist minister, the senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection is Leawood, Kansas. He’s very active in the American Methodist scene, and it’s likely you’ve heard his name or seen his face before, either on social media, or at General Conference, where he’s been a delegate every session since the year 2000. He’s also a prolific author, and one of his specialties has been writing books that can be easily used to support a church book group or a sermon series, like this one. In Half Truths , Adam takes a look at five different Christian cliches. Some folks think these phrases are in the Bible, and I can assure you, none of them are. We tend to spout these phrases in times of grief, and they can be useful to a point, but they quickly become personally and theologically problematic, at best, and at worst, they can do ...
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Faith, Certainty, and Me

  Friends, you’ve made it! It’s the final Sunday of Stump the Preacher 2025, sermons requested by you and then researched and delivered by me. A few of you put ideas in the proverbial hat that are already in the lineup for Stump the Preacher 2026! For today, the finale of Stump the Preacher, season 2025, we get Andy’s request: this question about what faith is, what doubt is, what certainty is, and which of those things I have. Well, here goes nothing. But first, an old story, about some teacher at a college somewhere, beginning a lecture in a business class by putting a large jar on a table. He took out a bag of big rocks, and dropped them in the jar one by one until they reached the top. He asked the class, “is this jar full now?” The class nodded, but the professor said “no, it isn’t!” Then he took out a bag of gravel, and poured the gravel in the jar until the gravel filled in all the cracks between the big rocks, and reached the top of the jar. The professor asked the class, “...
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Is Heaven as Scary as It Is in the Book of Revelation?

  Friends, we’re in the last 2 weeks of Stump the Preacher 2025, sermons requested by y’all and then delivered by me. This week’s request was from our dear Fae, who wanted to know if heaven is really as scary as it is in the book of Revelation. Good question, Fae! And I get it. I read Revelation all the way through for the very first time when I was 12. It was the spring of 1999, and Y2K was coming. Remember that nonsense? It was an era where everyone was getting nutty because they were scared and they were being fed false information…and not for the last time. If you were a younger Christian then, you had Y2K fear mongering coming from the news, or your parents, in one ear, and then the Left Behind book series in the other ear, and we were getting kind of obsessed with this notion that the world might end. And of course, it didn’t, and we’re still here. Please remember that next time you get invited to a fear mongering parade. I read Revelation with my Sunday School teacher, who w...
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