Sermons

Today’s encounter between the disciples and Jesus happens after the empty tomb of Easter morning; after Jesus appeared among the fearful disciples who had locked themselves in a house and said to them “Peace be with you.”  After Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  It happens after Jesus appears to them…

I suspect that none of us would want to be remembered for one of our weakest moments. Can you imagine if for all time someone attached a label to you that you could never shake? Clumsy Carolyn, Dumb Doug, Rude Rita, Selfish Sam. That would stink wouldn’t it? We’d probably protest, “C’mon, I did some…

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men…

Pastors Mary Scheer and Patti Ricotta team up to fill in for Pastor Doug. As Pastor Patti and I are sharing this message, we will be using the scripture Pastor Doug had planned on using today. When we realized on Friday that we would be preaching, we decided to split the scripture passage.  I will…

The other day I read a story in the New York Post titled Sucker! A would-be bank robber walked into a Manhattan bank hoping for a sweet payday — but left with nothing but some hard candy when a quick-thinking teller gave him the runaround, law-enforcement sources told The Post. The unidentified robber entered the…

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  2  Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.  3  While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.  4  For day and night your hand was heavy upon…

When you were little, or your kids were little, did anybody ever draw lines on the door post measuring the child’s height from year to year? Why did we do that? We wanted to see how much the child had grown, right? It was fun to see how much healthy development had taken place over…

John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost is fairly well known even if it isn’t fairly well read. It’s a retelling of the fall of Adam and Eve and hence humanity from God’s original created perfection. Much less well known, unfortunately, is the sequel, Paradise Regained. Especially striking about the latter poem is its subject —…

This is President’s Weekend when our nation remembers… to buy cars and go on vacation. In addition to those things, we also remember the births of two of our greatest presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Both Washington and Lincoln were instrumental in America being the land of freedom that it is today. February 17,…