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Waiting

  What do we do when we need to wait? It’s what this season is all about. Today is like New Year’s Day in the Church. No, not for the secular calendar. Y’all still have a whole month of 2025 left. But Advent begins the new Church year, and we begin in the void. There’s no John the Baptist, there’s no Jesus, Mary and Elizabeth don’t even know they’re expecting yet. In the next few weeks we’ll slowly fill the void with the familiar: next week the tree goes up, we hear the prophesy of Isaiah, Gabriel visits both Zechariah and Mary, and the poinsettia orders come in (thanks Jan!), and the sanctuary will be full of pretty red flowers. But we don’t have any of that yet. We kick off Advent not with nice baby news, but with apocalyptic warnings: a random person in a field will be taken, a random woman minding her own business in her kitchen will be taken, your house might be broken into, and no one knows when. Get ready! Jesus had a major flair for the dramatic. If you’re a nerd, like me, ...
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My Best Self

  This story introduces us to a new group: the Sadducees. Another group that doesn’t love Jesus’ public ministry, and, interestingly, a rival to the Pharisees. The Sadducees were a wealthy, aristocratic Jewish sect. They had control over the Temple in Jerusalem–believed by Jesus’ friends and neighbors to be the very home of God–as well as the Sanhedrin, the court that charges Jesus with blasphemy and hands him over to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. The Sadducees are very powerful, and this story sets up an important upset, one piece in the puzzle that puts Jesus on the cross on Good Friday. The Sadducees had two crucial differences from the Pharisees, and one of them was their political views. The Pharisees were deeply opposed to the Roman occupation of Palestine. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were loyal to Rome, and benefited greatly from that loyalty. The other difference had to do with theology, specifically beliefs about what happens after you die. I learned a little quip ...
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Fun Sized

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  Today we observe All Saints’ Day. It’s a day of remembrance: for the folks from this congregation who passed away in the last year, for our loved ones who passed recently, for our loved ones who passed years or even decades ago, and for the billions of souls in the history of the world who went on to life eternal. We didn’t know them, but God did. All those folks in heaven, and us here on earth, are connected through the Communion of Saints. This is one of my favorite holidays in the entire church year, but it’s not the easiest one to present to you guys. We have some absolutely epic All Saints hymns, but they can be hard to sing, especially today’s closing hymn. I’m asking you to indulge me, and I don’t have something cute and simple like “Jingle Bells” to put in the order of service as a peace offering. We don’t carve pumpkins or turkeys or decorate a tree or make baskets for All Saints, we don’t give or receive presents, and I have no particular reason to give anyone chocolate...
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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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