Sermons

  Lectionary : Opening Some of my best friends are good storytellers. In fact I reflected this past week that I think I trust a good storyteller more than I do someone who rigorously tries to stick to the facts. Interestingly as I’m sure you’re aware, Jesus was a good storyteller. In Hawaiian pidgen the way you refer to friends sitting around sharing their life stories is the phrase "talk story". Talk story is what you do with friends. Elie Wiesel said years ago, quoting ancient rabbis, that, "God made man because He loves stories." Over the years I’ve become convinced that talking story with good friends is what changes lives and converts sinners to saints. Over the years I have found that talking story is one of the best ways to prepare someone for initiation into the body of Christ. Next week we plan to have baptisms The Colt’s grandchildren, Reid and Anna Claire, are expecting to be baptized here at Saint Pauls. We got to sit at the table of their gran...

  Readings Lectionary Introduction I want to talk about God -- (kind of an expected topic for a preacher) I want to talk about gratitude -- I long for the day when "gratitude" is as common place among believers as is judgment or anger. I want to talk about "stewardship" -- not so much in the context of giving money to the church but in the context of Genesis 1:26. Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.” (ESV) or as the King James Version put it. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (KJV) The traditional translation is that men and women were given "dominion" or ...

The patience of Job Early on in reflecting on the lessons for today I wondered where the proverb that most of us have heard would have actually come from? The patience of Job. If you read the book of Job you cannot help but recognize that Job himself is anything but patient. In fact, over and over again, you will encounter a man who has experienced unimaginable loss and who argues with God, powerfully argues, that he didn't deserve it. Job is not an example of patience. I had to look up the answer. That I had to look it up and didn't know it is, in part, a measure of my having grown old, and it is also a function of not knowing the Bible as well as my Baptist friends. Good source of the proverb is from the New Testament, the letter of James 5:11. It is also a product of a mistranslation from the Greek into English. In the King James Bible we read, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” This led to generations trying to read Job as having been a long-suffering faithful servan...

Proper 22b 2021 Next week: Next week we will have a liturgy, a special liturgy. My hope is that we will be able to be outside. My hope is that we will get some participation from friends and neighbors outside of the congregation. We’re going to do our part since our plan is to bring Mary Pat‘s brother and his wife who will be with us that weekend. You may have read in my journal blog about how the word liturgy means the people's work. Next week the main work is intended to be yours. We will have a kind of guided exercise that will give us away to symbolically offer to God our Laments, our Longings, and our Hopes. Our experiences will be clustered around four parts of our lives that have had a particular focus for us over the last couple of years. We will hold up and offer to God our Lament, Longing, and Hope as we experience it related to four areas of our common life: There has been an explosion of different reactions as we have all been confronted with the pandemic of Covid...