Prepare Ye

This is my sermon manuscript for December 31. The lesson is John 1:19-34. A recording may be posted after this auto-posts. Over this extended weekend, many people will begin an annual ritual. You take down the Christmas decorations, and bring out your workout gear, or make the exercise bike, or treadmill accessible. We end one season, and begin the season of resolutions. However, like Christmas, the season of resolutions lasts about 12 days. By mid-January, the exercise bike has resumed its role as secondary coat rack. But the end of a year, and the beginning of a new one provides us with the opportunity to reflect on what we have been doing, and look at, and maybe even pursue, a new way of doing things. That is what is going on in our Gospel lesson. God is doing a new thing, and the leaders of Israel’s Jewish community don’t like it. John the Baptizer has created a great deal of controversy. He is baptizing people in the Jordan River. He is quoting the words of the prophe

os_xmas_morn_ed.m4a Download File This is my sermon text for my Christmas Morn message. The text is Luke 2:4-20. EDIT: An audio recording has been added. Merry Christmas. In God’s time, there was Good News of Great Joy to all people. In God’s time, a gift was given to us. In God’s time, the things that separate us from God, sin and death, would be defeated. In God’s time, humanity would be reconciled to God. And all of this occurred because a baby boy was born in a barn, laid in a feeding trough and wrapped in rags. The time was right. But what should our response be? Because we know the whole story of Jesus, that this baby whose birth we remember and celebrate will grow to be an incredible teacher and preacher; that he will heal the sick, and raise the dead; that he will perform many miracles; but most importantly, that he will give up his life on the Cross; and then he will be raised from that death; through him our sins are wiped clean and death i

naz_xmas_eve_ed.m4a Download File Below is my sermon text for our Christmas Eve services. The Gospel lessons are: Luke 2:6-14 and John 1:1-5, 9-14, 16-18. Apologies for the poor quality of the recording; this was the best of the three. Merry Christmas. The Gospels contain two very different stories about Jesus’ birth. Luke, and to some degree Matthew, tell the story we know best. Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem because of the census. There is no place for them to stay, so she gives birth to her baby amongst the animals, and lays him in a feeding trough for his first crib. But John begins differently. John begins back at THE Beginning. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The true light, which enlightens everyon

Below is my message for Sunday, December 10 on Ezekiel 37:1-14, the Valley of Dry Bones.   As far as you can see, it is brilliant white. Eye blinding white covers the ground. As far you can hear, it is as silent as a closed library. You are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of millions of bones. There is no smell, because the bodies have been dead for a long, long time. The bodies have been picked clean of any shred of the person they once belonged to. The harsh rays of the sun have bleached the bones as white as the few clouds that float overhead. God brought Ezekiel into a valley filled with dried, human bones. The bones are the bodies of the people of Israel, dead because they had lost faith in their god. The nation of Israel is dead because they did not keep Him first, slain because they did not obey His commands, murdered because they did not love Him with their whole heart. They lost their way, lost God as the focus of their lives, and lost their f

Below is a draft of my sermon for December 3, the First Sunday of Advent, on the lesson from Daniel 3 in the Narrative Lectionary. The lesson is the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. As I mention in my message, the inspiration and most of the message that I gave came from a sermon that the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. gave at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on November 5, 1967. A transcript of that powerful message was done by Austin Smith and is here . A recording of Rev. Dr. King's sermon is on YouTube and is embedded below. Two of my attempts, which pale next to the message of Rev. Dr. King, are at the bottom of this post. This lesson is a Sunday School classic. It has repetitions, strange and fun to say names, and comes to a conclusion with a moral. But there is so much more to this, especially right in the middle of this story. The leaders and prominent people from Jerusalem had been taken into exile in Babylon, and put to work in the B

I make this post almost every year on my Facebook page at the beginning of Advent to share what I believe is the most beautiful version of a Christmas Carol. It is "O Holy NIght," and was performed by Trombone Shorty and other jazz musicians from New Orleans on the tv show "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Here is a  video of the song, and a link to download ( http://writingjunkie.net/sou…/Studio60-O-Holy-Night-NOLA.mp3 )the song. Merry Christmas.