One of the great tragedies of life is that we can be living in the middle of an epochal moment and take it for granted, pretending the moment somehow will live forever or that the people with whom we share life will continue in their station unabated. We are prisoners of the present, even forContinue reading “In Memoriam: The Epoch of Richard Harper”
Category Archives: Sermons
My Fathers Sermon on Peace
Two weeks ago, Feb 26th, was my father’s last Sunday alive. In usual fashion, he found himself at church around 9:30am preparing to teach Sunday School. I did not attend his Sunday School class that morning. I missed his last lesson. In retrospect, I wish I had not worked so much on the weekends,Continue reading “My Fathers Sermon on Peace”
Stealing Your Way Into Heaven
GOSPEL OF LUKE 16.1-13 Couched in between two of Jesus’ most famous parables, The Prodigal Son and the Rich Man and Lazarus, we discover one of Jesus’ most unassuming and most difficult parables throughout the pages of the Gospel. I suppose this parable, the parable of the Unjust Steward…did you hear that…the parableContinue reading “Stealing Your Way Into Heaven”
Advent Sermon: God Comes into the Lights of Evil
Did you see it? Did you see them? All around us, in the darkness, there are lanterns. Lanterns in the darkness that surround us. We peer into the darkness, squinting our eyes, attempting to make out a shape or hear a sound. We peer into the darkness trying to see who’s there. We peer intoContinue reading “Advent Sermon: God Comes into the Lights of Evil”
Christ of Chaos- a sermon in Luke
*A sermon on Jesus, judgment and some difficult words of The Christ in the recent Lectionary reading of Luke 12.49-53* “When life has become old and the spirit faint, it is in the beginnings that we again find the living springs from which the vital energies flow” Jurgen Moltmann, “Hope and Reality: Contradiction and Correspondence,”Continue reading “Christ of Chaos- a sermon in Luke”
Sermon Pentecost 2013: Fire From the Tomb
This is a sermon I preached this past Sunday in my local Church of the Nazarene setting. My tradition has a precarious and intimate relationship to this text, especially as it concerns ideas of the holy spirit, holiness and Christian experience. As I began to look more carefully exegetically at this passage, particularly within itsContinue reading “Sermon Pentecost 2013: Fire From the Tomb”
Parables: Stories About the End of the World
The following is a sermon I preached in year B this past summer. In my ministerial context, sermons are generally 20-30 minutes. This one is on the 30 minute side due to the pedagogical material at the front of the sermon. I hope this helps you wrestle with this very short Markan parable as muchContinue reading “Parables: Stories About the End of the World”
ParanormalChrist 