Psalm 104 – “Unity with of All Things” – July 14, 2019

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When you ask a congregation, especially Govans congregation for sermon topics, you never know what you’re going to get. I asked this congregation to complete the following question ”What does the Bible say about ________?” Shortly after that I received the following e-mail from choir member Doug Storey:

“Hi Tom, In response to your request for sermon topics, here is one I have been thinking about for a long time.

A book that influenced me many years ago was the slightly hippy-dippy effort to popularize Eastern philosophy, especially the Vedanta, by Alan Watts called “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.” In it, he provides a simplified version of the Hindu creation myth that goes something like this…

Romans 1:16-17 – “Yes, We Can!” – May 19, 2019

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It’s hard to know where to begin with Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, better known as Romans. On one hand, it is his most sophisticated articulation of his theology, written late in his ministry after refining his message with years of active missionary work. It also probably influenced the Protestant Reformation more than any other single book of the Bible with its emphasis on salvation by faith alone.

On the other hand, Romans can be a daunting read as Paul takes a deep dive into human sinfulness and the nuances of faith with somewhat esoteric arguments based on assumptions we might not have. Further, anyone who has been a victim of anti-gay teaching and preaching in the church may know that just a bit further on in this same first chapter of Romans, we find a passage that has been and is still used repeatedly to bludgeon, shame, and exclude LGBTQ people. And though we can accurately state that Paul did not have a modern understanding of sexual orientation or knowledge of same-gender romantic relationships that were based on love, it is also probably fair to say that even if he had that knowledge, he would have come to the same conclusions as he did. In fact, that particular passage from Romans 1 is one of the passages that led me in my own journey to conclude there are some things in the Bible that do not reflect God’s will for us today, but instead reflect the biases and prejudices of the flawed, sinful people God used to write the Bible. And though the line between the author’s prejudice and God’s will is not always clear, we as modern people of faith have the responsibility to try to figure out which is which.

Matthew 28:1-10 – “Listen” – April 21, 2019

Let’s break this passage down into three basic lessons: listen to women, listen to angels, and listen to Jesus

First, listen to women. The fact that women were ever excluded from leadership in the church and that they are still excluded in many churches, is some truly audacious patriarchy. Because every gospel tells us that women were the most devoted and fearless followers of Jesus and that women were the first witnesses of the resurrection and the first preachers about the resurrection.  The gospels don’t agree on everything but they all agree, the women did not run away at the crucifixion like the men did, they remained faithful even after Jesus’ death, they saw the angels at the tomb, witnessed the empty tomb, saw the Risen Jesus, and proclaimed it to the men who had run away in fear. So, that the patriarchy was able to look at these stories and still come to the conclusion that women should not be allowed into leadership in the church is basically insane.

Matthew 22:1-14 – “Reflections on Divine Judgement” – March 24, 2019

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Until today, as we have been reading from Matthew’s gospel, we have managed to avoid people being thrown “into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” But, we can avoid it no longer. Matthew is actually very fond of this concept. He uses the phrase six times in his Gospel. By comparison, Luke uses it once. Mark and John don’t use it at all.

The Gospel of Matthew is known for its emphasis on divine judgment and punishment and we have now entered into a section of the Gospel where it comes up more often.

Matthew 17:1-8 – “Transfiguration and Thin Places” – March 3, 2019

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There is an expression attributed to ancient Celtic culture that has become fairly popular in the spiritual/faith circles of our day. The expression is “thin places.” The saying goes that heaven and earth are always only three feet apart, but in thin places, they are even closer. Thin places are physical places or even moments in time when the veil between the material and spiritual is pulled away or becomes transparent. Thin places can be ancient holy sites or particularly moving experiences of nature, or profound events in life such as the birth of a child or the death of a loved one. In all such times and places, we might think that God is coming closer to us, or the barrier that seems to exists between the Heaven and Earth crumbles. But, I wonder if that is really what is happening in those thin places.

Matthew 14:13-33 – “Possible and Impossible and Possible Miracles” – February 24, 2019

At Soul Kitchen our weekly free community meal we have noticed over time a very peculiar phenomenon. We seem to always get a really big turnout whenever we have baked chicken. Even though we don’t advertise we are having baked chicken; there should be no way our guest know we are having baked chicken, we still get a big turnout when we bake chicken. People who only come occasionally show up when we have baked chicken. New people show up when we have baked chicken. It’s like there is some kind of telepathic messaging sent out into the Baltimore area on baked chicken night. Recently this happened

Sermon – “Bringing Our Present Into God’s Future” – January 28, 2019

In the first Back to Future movie Marty McFly uses a time machine created from a Delorean to travel from 1985 to 1955 which is before he was born and just before the time his parents met. But, somehow back in 1955 Marty interferes with his parents’ first meeting and therefore jeopardizes his own existence. Then he has to go through all kinds of adventures to get his parents to meet, fall in love, and thereby save himself from existential obliteration in the future which in the movie is the present and in the present which in the movie is the past. In the first sequel Bif, the villain goes back in time to give his younger self, a sports almanac that allows younger Bif to become incredibly wealthy betting on sports which causes the future to become dystopian since Bif is a total jerk. Now Marty has to go back in time to keep old Bif from giving young Bif the almanac and thereby saving the future.

Matthew 4:1-11 – “Finding Peace When We Feel Something Is Missing” – January 20, 2019

 

Why are we tempted? What lies beneath our temptations? Today I will suggest that beneath our temptations is a deep sense that we are lacking something; that we are incomplete as we are, and so we are searching for something out there to complete us; a sense that we have a hole within us and it must filled if we are to be at peace. 

But, before we dig into that idea too deeply, just one theological point about the text in general. 

Matthew 3:1-2 – “Change the Way You Are Living!” – January 13, 2018

Today I want to focus on just one sentence from Matthew chapter 3. It is the sentence that the Gospel of Matthew uses to summarize the message of John the Baptist, and not coincidentally to summarize the message of Jesus, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Matthew 2 – “Limiting Our Use of Smartphones and Why It Matters” – January 6, 2019

This world can be a dangerous place for children. It is true today and it was true in the time of Jesus. Matthew tells a story told nowhere else in the Gospels about a massacre of very young children by King Herod. Herod was so afraid of a new king rising up to challenge his family’s power that when the magi failed to come back to him with the baby Jesus’ location, Herod ordered the massacre of all young children in the region. It did not matter to him that hundreds of innocent children would be killed as long as he could feel certain the threat to his power was eliminated.

Today children continue to be expendable pawns in the power games of our leaders.