Tag: Preaching

by Laurie Gudim The whole of Luke 21 is Jesus talking about floods and famines, wars and insurrections, earthquakes and betrayals. He finishes up with

by Sam Candler 1 Samuel 1:4-20 This week, newspaper headlines are moving away from the coverage of a general’s extramarital affair, and moving towards the

by Michael Carney Friday morning I got up early to walk the dog and work on my sermon. Since the men’s Bible study earlier in

Believing in the Resurrection means choosing to place every situation—even situations that seem hopeless—in the hands of God, and waiting and watching with hopeful anticipation for signs of new life.

Jesus draws people by surprise because his stories are of characters his listeners wouldn’t want to hear about. But my hunch as a writer, storyteller, and ‘theater director’ in these improvisations I’ve seen is that Jesus crafted stories about characters he liked.

Right now I’m teaching parables with my fourth grade class, and they are really bothered by the injustice of God’s love and mercy. It makes them crazy to contemplate that even though they try to be good, God loves someone bad just as much. Fairness is the highest value to kids that age, and to imagine that God isn’t fair—that’s just too much.

I read today that the Episcopal Church has cut its entire Evangelism budget, and without getting into a debate about why this line item was vetoed, I began to think about the need for grass roots Evangelism. To share our Faith with others, we need to live ethically, and we also need to speak with passion about the tenets of our Faith, to speak about God’s work in our lives. In essence, I believe, we need to recapture the ministry of preaching.

For years I have thought about rifling through old sermon files to see whether there is a book lurking there somewhere. I suppose that publishing a book of sermons is every priest’s fantasy, after preaching week in and week out year after year. Surely there must be something valuable and permanent to make up for all that Saturday night angst and sweat.

In February of 1920 – as Turks were massacring thousands of Armenian Christians in the city of Marash – my great-grandfather, another American, and two Arab Christians drove toward the city in a relief truck filled with supplies to help the victims and survivors. They were slain by Turks with orders to kill any Christians on the road.