Text: Acts 2:42-47

At the risk of sabotaging my own sermon by drawing your attention completely away from it, I want to draw your attention completely away from the sermon for a bit and invite you to take out the insert in your bulletins for the 12 and 6 scriptures project.  We figured one way to get high participation was to get it to you while you’re a captive audience and have you at least start to fill it out and maybe even complete it and hand it in before you leave the church today.  Hopefully you’ve caught some drift of this project and know that we are asking each person, young and old, to submit up to 12 of your personal most important and meaningful scriptures and six most personally troubling and difficult scriptures.  From these submissions an adult Sunday school class will discern our congregational 12 and 6 scriptures and we will use these to focus some of our worship themes for the next year as well as help further name our gifts and mission.  At least a couple of you have asked if you can flip the lists so you can name your 12 most troubling scriptures.  So if that’s what you must do, who am I to say to no.  Please proceed.  So, there are pencils in the pews in front of you and I invite each of you, right now, to write at least one scripture reference – a verse, a chapter, the name of a story, on your sheet.  That way you’re already on your way.

One of my favorite quotes about church services comes from the not so religious author Kurt Vonnegut who said that church is a place where we day dream about God.  So, you have full permission to day dream about…

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/20140504sermon.mp3

Text: Luke 24:13-35

The most difficult part of preaching a sermon on the Road to Emmaus story isn’t finding something to say, but choosing what not to say. The passage has so many entry points and sub-themes that it can be a little overwhelming choosing which part to zoom in on and which to keep at the periphery. This is exactly as the gospel writer intends it to be. This story occurs in the final chapter of Luke and serves as something of a summary of Luke’s entire gospel message. It’s his way of bringing his message to a climax and conclusion, and it’s also the gospel itself in miniature: We are on a journey, confused and disoriented. Jesus comes and walks alongside us, only we don’t recognize him for who he truly is. The scriptures are opened and illuminated. Hospitality is extended around a meal, the bread is taken, blessed, broken, and given. We, the travelers, have our eyes opened to Christ, are transformed, and go and share it with others.

There it is, the gospel in one narrative sweep.

Today we are welcoming five people into membership in our congregation. It’s a day I’ve been looking forward to for a while and a time of gratitude and celebration for all of us. A chance for us to remember our own baptismal and gospel identity.

Of all the things that could be said about this passage as it relates to who we are as a church, I want to focus on what initially might feel like a bit of a downer.

Emmaus Road is a resurrection story, taking place on the same day that the women visited the tomb and found it empty. Easter Sunday. “Now on that same day,” the story begins. These two travelers who had been followers of Jesus are…

Texts: John 20:1-18; Psalm 118:1-2; 14-24

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

“Easter is late this year.” I’ve heard this said many times over the last number of months, and have said it a few times myself. A late Easter affects worship planners and pushes back spring breaks for some schools. It would normally mean that the early signs of spring would already be starting to look like the full greenery of summer. But it just so happens that spring is also late this year, so it actually feels like we’re about on track.

The date for determining Easter is complicated enough that it can’t be stated succinctly in a few sentences, especially since it has changed a few times throughout church history. In Western Christianity it involves a combination of factors including the spring equinox, the full moon, and the date of Passover. Sun, earth, moon, all hurling through cosmic space; and the commemoration of ancient Hebrew slaves liberated from the captivity of empire. When everything aligns, Easter has arrived. For us Easter can be as early as March 22 and as late as April 25, so today, April 20th is pushing the back end of possibile dates.

Despite the difficulty in knowing quite why Easter is when it is, the fact that there is a formula, and that it does come every year, even if it’s late, is marvel enough. Having a formula for an annual celebration of resurrection feels, in some ways, like a marvelous contradiction. The resurrection of Jesus, almost by definition, is a shattering of expectation, a break with our tired, worn out way of living, a most un-formulaic burst of life which alters our perception of how the world really works.   Maybe we’ve been ready since March. Maybe we’ll never be ready. Ready or not,…

Texts: Matthew 21:1-11, Isaiah 50:4-9 

“You are a peculiar people.” We know each other well enough by now that I can say that, right? This is actually how the King James Version of the Bible translates a line from the letter of 1 Peter written to a group of early Christians. It comes at a place where Peter is offering different phrases to tell these folks just what kind of people they are for choosing to follow the Jesus way of life. “You are a royal priesthood, you are a holy nation, you are a peculiar people.” Peculiar isn’t a word we use much anymore, so it hasn’t made it into the more recent English translations, but it still has a nice ring to it. Peculiar can mean that one is distinctive and belongs to only one master, such that we are peculiar in belonging only to God. But peculiar can also simply mean strange, odd, not fitting in to the ordinary pattern of things. Most of us already knew this about ourselves – that when you get right down to it, we’re all pretty strange. But Peter is speaking this to a collective personality, the church, the Jesus-followers. He’s saying You, as a group, are a peculiar people, so get used to marching to the beat of a different drummer. You have this odd devotion to this rabbi from Nazareth who believed so much in the utter vitality of life that he gave his own away in order to open our eyes. Who does that kind of thing? You’re peculiar, and that’s a good thing.

It may feel a little peculiar today going on a parade around the block. But if everybody’s doing it, at least it makes us a little less peculiar. It’s a small way of participating in…

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/20140330sermon.mp3

Audio picks up after the initial story

Text: John 9:1-41

This is a story passed on to me a while back by Nate Toland, told by Peter Rollins, who’s from Northern Ireland, and he told it as if it were a story that actually happened, so that’s how I’ll tell it.

In Ireland they hold these public competitions which people find quite entertaining and a few years ago they held a competition for who could build the largest sheep pen. There were three competitors: an architect, an engineer, and an old farmer. They were each given the same amount of lumber and they had the same amount of time, to build their sheep pen.

So the architect went first and being an architect he knew how to build the fencing so it maximized efficiency and strength and he worked away at it, and when his time was up the judges came and looked it over and tested it out and it was able to hold 100 sheep. Well done.

And the engineer went next and she had the idea that if she could cut each of the boards down the middle lengthwise, if she could rip each piece of lumber, that she’d have twice as much lumber to work with and it would still be strong enough to hold up. So that’s what she did. And when you do that, if you think about it, it actually allows you to build something with four times the square footage, so after making her cuts she worked away at building the fence and when her time was up the judges came and tested it out and it held 400 sheep. Very well done.

Well the old farmer was last, and he worked slowly but he finished rather quickly. The judges came and saw that he…