Today is Pentecost. It’s the end of our series on the “Rest of the Story.” In this series, we’ve been talking about the rest of Jesus’ earthly story, some of his appearances to his followers after his resurrection. On Easter, we talked about his appearance to Mary Magdalene, and how he sent her to tell his other followers that he had been resurrected, he was alive. Read the full text here. 

They’d pretty much given up hope. And the thing is, it had all had started out so incredibly. Jesus had appeared to Peter and Andrew, James and John in almost this same spot and told them, “Follow me, and you’ll be fishing for people.” At the time, they had no idea what he was talking about, and after three years with him, they still weren’t entirely clear. Read the full text. 

Happy Easter! In case you didn’t know, we are now in the season of Eastertide, the 50ish days between Jesus’ resurrection and Pentecost. Now, there are a lot of interesting things about the season of Easter, but maybe the most interesting is that until Jesus ascended, 10 days before Pentecost, the resurrected Jesus was walking around here on earth, interacting with his followers. Now, you would be forgiven for not realizing this. Compared to Jesus’ earthly ministry before his crucifixion, the New Testament does not dedicate a lot of ink to the time between Easter Sunday and Pentecost. I Read the full text. 

This Sunday in our services, we’ll be honoring our graduating seniors in the Class of 2025. They have been a blessing to so many of us in our church over the years. We are sending them off into their new adventures with all the love and hope for their future we can give them. The letter from Paul to the Philippians is, like our celebration with our seniors, a letter of affection and love. Just like everyone has words of advice, given out of love, for our graduates, Paul has words of advice for his friends in Philippi. Read the full text. 

We live in an anxious world. We’ve talked about that the last 2 weeks. We’ve talked about how anxiety and fear are a natural part of what it means to be human. I mean, if a tiger is chasing you, a little bit of anxiety is a good thing. It might save your life. But what we’re experiencing as a culture right now is not normal. It isn’t good or healthy. In fact, it’s making a lot of us really miserable and shortening our lives. Read the full text. 

This is the second week of our Anxious for Nothing sermon series and I’m anxious to get started. (See what I did there?) Of course, in this series, we’re talking about a different kind of anxiety. Last week you probably learned about the epidemic of anxiety, the tidal wave of stress that we as a culture seem to be experiencing right now. Now, I’m always amused by those people who take the latest earthquake or tsunami or hurricane as an opportunity to announce authoritatively that we have now entered the end t imes, despite the fact that earthquakes and tsunamis have been happening since the formation of the earth. Read the full text. 

We are starting a new sermon series based on Max Lucado's book Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World.” I had a doctor’s appointment Monday morning, so I considered taking the book to read as I waited in the doctor’s waiting room. However, I quickly thought twice about taking a book to read. It was not because I was concerned that I would not have time to read or look strange reading a book in public instead of looking at my phone. No, I realized the complete irony of walking into a doctor’s appointment reading a book about anxiety when my doctor’s appointment was to talk about my anxiety! Read the full text. 

Peter thought he was set. He was Jesus’ right-hand man. And when Jesus ascended the Jewish throne and kicked the Romans out of the Holy Land, Peter was going to have it made. But then Jesus died. The man who could cure the blind and raise the dead couldn’t f igure out a way to escape from the priests and the Romans? Actually, it was more like he hadn’t even tried. It was as if he’d expected or even wanted to die. Read the full text. 

Many of us remember the days before the internet. Those of us who do may remember the exciting early days and the promise of a technology that could provide us with all the world’s information, presented to us anytime and anywhere. After all, the WWW that we used to type in stood for World Wide Web. I know that for a kid like me who read encyclopedias for fun, this sounded like the greatest thing ever.Read the full text. 

When my son Jack was maybe 3-4 years old, he developed this really annoying habit of pushing, pulling, twisting, and switching every button and lever he could find in our cars. He thought it was the funniest thing ever when Kirsten or I would turn the key and suddenly all the lights were blinking, the windshield wipers were going full blast, and the speakers were blowing out. Read the full text.

The disciples had been following Jesus for three years. Jesus had even named some of them—his inner circle of 12—as his apostles. They had walked with him, shared meals with him, spent time around the campfire with him, no-doubt engaged in long, heartfelt conversations with him. Yet they still didn’t “get” him; what he had come to do, and what it meant to really follow him. Read the full text. 

Our sermon series this Lent is about surrender; surrendering ourselves—our brains our bodies, our will and our lives—to Jesus. Which, I will admit, is hard. And, in today’s scripture, we see why. In this scripture, from the book of Proverbs, we are told to trust God, not our own insight. We are told to acknowledge God rather than being “wise in your own eyes.” And in setting up this contrast, the author of this passage is presenting us with a choice. This isn’t one of those both/and things, this is either/or. Trust God or trust yourself. Trust God with your life, your well being, your future; or trust yourself. And the author is clear. Trusting God is the way to go. Read the full text. 

This passage is from one of my very favorite stories in the entire Bible. It’s the story of the Samaritan woman that Jesus meets at the well. In this story, Jesus is traveling from Judea in the south back up north to his home base in Galilee. In between is Samaria. As we’ve talked about before, the Jews and the Samaritans didn’t like each other … at all. Read the full text. 

As I considered today’s scripture, I got to thinking about when I first came back to the church. I remember being surprised to find that I actually enjoyed it. The pastor’s messages were usually at least a little bit interesting and almost always amusing. I met and made some good friends. It was a good thing. Read the full text. 

Last week I mentioned that when I first became a follower of Jesus, I gave. Somewhere in the neighborhood of ten dollars a month. I understood from what the preacher had said that I was supposed to give, so Kirsten and I gave. We figured ten dollars a month just about satisfied our obligation. So, when I wrote that check at the beginning of the month, I figured Kirsten and I had done our duty. We had met our requirement. We had paid our church tax to keep the facilities running and the worship flowing. Read the full text. 

Growing up, I was selfish. No sugarcoating it. I’ve shared about my 5th birthday party. How, as I unwrapped each present, there was an ever-growing pile of toys next to my little throne, but whenever another kid tried to play with one of them, I immediately dropped the toy I was unwrapping, chased them down like a dog, retrieved the toy, and restored it to its proper place on the pile. Read the full text here.

They just couldn’t get their heads around it. It was so brutal, so sacreligious. The Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, had brutally tortured and killed a group of Galilean revolutionaries. But that wasn’t enough, he then committed the ultimate sacrilege of mixing their blood with the Jewish sacrificial offerings. Read the full text. 

Jesus seems pretty clear in this scripture. “Ask for what you wish and it will be done for you.” He says similar things in other scripture. For instance, in Matthew’s Gospel, 17:20, he says if you’ve got faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. Read the full text. 

As a pastor, I have presided at a lot of funerals. And this is one of the two or three scriptures that seem to be read at just about every funeral. It’s a beautiful, comforting image. For me it stirs up visions of maybe sitting by the fireplace on a cold day, reunited with family and friends. But is it real? Read the full text here. 

One of the things I am enjoying about this sermon series on wrestling with doubt is that I can relate to almost everything we’re talking about. So, for instance, today we will be discussion the question of who’s going to heaven or, to put it a little differently, who’s saved? I shared a few weeks ago how I went away from the church and from God early in my life. And one of the things that took me away from the church and kept me there was this very question. Read the full text here.

Last week we talked about the question of whether there really is a God. We talked about how we all believe in something, either in God or in something else. I explained how and why I choose to believe in God, and invited all of you to make the same choice. But there are a lot of people, maybe some of you, who just aren’t there yet. There are a lot of people who may generally believe in some sort of higher power, but they have a difficult time believing in God, at least God as we Christians understand God. Read the full text here. 

I think I’ve shared with y’all before that I was raised in the Catholic church, but never really got it. It all seemed like a bunch of empty formality. So I left the church—and God—as soon as I had the chance. Maybe in an effort to justify my rejection of God, I decided that science had exposed belief in God as mere wishful thinking. Science provided a coherent explanation of how the universe, the earth, life, and us came into existence over the course of billions of years. And that explanation didn’t involve a garden or a snake or an apple. Read the full text here.