Category: Sermons
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Transcendent Love
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on March 31, 2024, Easter Sunday. Based on John 20:1-18. I want to start by backing up a week. You may recall that last week was Palm Sunday. Jesus borrowed a donkey and rode into Jerusalem triumphantly. What exactly his triumph was at that point, I don’t know.…
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Barriers
Sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on March 3, 2024, the Third Sunday in Lent. Based on John 2:13-22. I’m going to start this morning with a little bit of history. In the earliest part of the Bible, Genesis, we read about the ancient Israelites worshipping God in a variety of places, places…
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Listen Up!
Sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Transfiguration Sunday, February 11, 2024. Based on Mark 9:2-9. Let’s start today by talking about the characters in the story. Jesus, obviously. We’ll get to him in a little while. James and John were the sons of Zebedee, sometimes called the Sons of Thunder. They were…
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Meet Them Where They Are
Sermon preached on February 4, 2024, Fifth Sunday After Epiphany, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 and Mark 1:29-39. Richard Bach is the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which was incidentally the source of my name. It was his first novel and a breakout hit. He is a pilot by…
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God Is Calling
Homily preached at Presbyterian Manor on January 14, 2024. Based on 1 Samuel 3:1-10. What does it mean to be “called”? In the story of Samuel’s calling, he is sleeping next to the Ark of the Covenant, the holiest possible place, and God literally called his name. Even with this obvious calling, Samuel did not…
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The Second-Best Time
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 7, 2024, which combined Epiphany and Baptism of the Lord. Based on Matthew 2:1-12 and Mark 1:4-11. Last month, Rhonda and I took a trip to Pittsburgh to see Jesse direct the Pitt bell choir in their Christmas concert. On the way, we visited an old…
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Mary Knew
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 24, 2023, Fourth Sunday of Advent. Based on Luke 1:26-38, 46-55. The event we hear today is memorialized by Roman Catholics in their prayer called the Angelus. When I go to the White House Retreat Center, we pray the Angelus three times daily. Each time through…
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Change Your Heart
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 10, 2023, Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Mark 1:1-8. Repent! That’s the usual word we associate with John the Baptist. He came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We commonly understand “repentance” to be related to “penitence.” To repent is to…
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Caring for the Kin-dom
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on November 26, 2023, Reign of Christ Sunday. Based on Matthew 25:31-46. Much of modern political philosophy is based on the idea that we are individuals who enter a social contract. That is, the natural state of humanity is fully independent with full freedom, but we choose to…
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You Had One Job!
Preached on November 12, 2023. Based on Matthew 25:1-13. Have you ever seen those memes titled, “You had one job!”? Things like, at an intersection where there’s a stop sign, the street is painted with “S-O-T-P”? Or an article in a newspaper with a headline, “Add header here before printing”? Or perhaps a billboard or…