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What it Means to Be "Childlike"
In his book of sermons titled The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner mentions two qualities of childlikeness. First, children have no fixed preconceptions of reality. If someone tells them that ... -
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Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you. -
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It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself. -
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Gosh, Some Angels
My ten-year-old son Jim had to write a play for Christmas for his Sunday School class. He made it a dialogue between two animals at Bethlehem. It goes like this: Donkey: It sure is cold, is it not? ... -
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The incarnation is a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers... Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by i... -
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Joy Beacons
Katja, our seven-year-old granddaughter, stepped in it, as they say. She had doggie droppings on the bottom of her tennies. Not just one foot, mind you, but both. Her mother, Maureen, suggested she le... -
lectionary
15th Sunday after Pentecost
Preaching Commentary An Applicable Passage There are a number of passages in God’s Word, both in the Old and New Testaments in which the original context no longer bears much resemblance to our own... -
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Welcoming Children is Like Welcoming Jesus Himself
Just this morning, my family attended church with our son who has autism. He was particularly enthused by the music today, and he was moving around quite a bit. A man in the choir noticed our son, and... -
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Doubting Santa’s Existence?
It is astonishing that some people still doubt the existence of Santa Claus. Despite the vast amount of photographic evidence, the hundreds of annual reports on Father Christmas’s activities from perf... -
lectionary
Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
Preaching Commentary The context Having addressed his disciples with the blessings and woes (6:20-26), Jesus now addresses the multitude of people (6:17, cf. 7:1). As with the blessings and woes, L... -
lectionary
16th Sunday after Pentecost
Preaching Commentary What is Forgiveness? Forgiveness isn’t an act of will or a reaction to an apology. Forgiveness is an act of faith, faith in response to the extravagant sacrifice, grace, and me... -
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This Child is a Gift
I will never forget the witness of an Episcopal priest named Tom Minifie several years ago in St. Luke’s Church in Seattle, Washington. He spotted a high-profile couple sitting in the last pew with th... -
liturgy
Faithfully Led by God's Mercy
Merciful God, you have given us the gift of life. We confess the uncaring ways we have treated others. We have been impatient with those growing old. We have been inattentive to the curiosities of the... -
lectionary
27th Sunday after Pentecost
Christ the King Sunday Christ the King Sunday reminds us that Christ has ascended to sit at the right hand of God and will come again to rule and judge. This Sunday’s readings might initially feel a... -
lectionary
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Preaching Commentary Context Signs and Dialogue There’s a reoccurring pattern in Johns’s Gospel in which Jesus performs a sign, which is followed by dialogue and then commentary from Jesus that pr... -
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“I’m in the Secret Service”
Jim was leaving church after Christmas services when the pastor greeted him and said, “Jim, it’s time you joined the Army of the Lord. We need to see you every Sunday.” “I’m already in the Army of th... -
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The Christian's new life is a life of love, forgiveness, and kindness, modeled after the example of Christ. -
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Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his need. He is not entirely sorry for the ... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, 2 Samuel 23:1-7
Context Last Words This chapter begins, “Now these are the last words of David…” This might strike the reader as odd, because 1 Kings and 1 Chronicles have David say a number of things that certainl... -
liturgy
Call to Worship for Christ the King Sunday
Come, Worship The Alpha and Omega The Beginning and the End The First and the Last Unmatched Majesty, drawing near closer than breath closer than pulse Meeting you here Meeting you now -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Matthew 18:15-20
An Applicable Passage There are a number of passages in God’s Word, both in the Old and New Testaments in which the original context no longer bears much resemblance to our own. In those cases, preac... -
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Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. -
liturgy
Holy Spirit, you have come to reconcile
Holy Spirit, you have come to reconcile us to each other, but we resist your work to bind us together. We hold onto grudges. Even though we know God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ, we are slow to for... -
lectionary
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h... -
liturgy
Embracing Forgiveness Through Christ's Love
Gracious God, through the forgiveness of Christ you hold nothing against us. In our pride, we have withheld forgiveness from others. In fear, we have chosen distance rather than relationship. Yet you ... -
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Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none that is less than this. -
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Common Things and Cracks in the Surface of Reality
The child became a man and the man became a preacher whose sermons were full of commonplace things: seeds and nets, coins and fishes, lilies of the field, and birds of the air. Wherever he was, he had... -
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Turning from Conflict to Conversion
Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us... -
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Jesus is a reconciler of people, not a divider. He wants to bring people together, not finalize separations. -
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Goodbye God
A young girl was preparing to move with her family from New York to Dallas, and she couldn’t contain her excitement. That night, as she said her bedtime prayers, she ended with her usual, “God bless M...
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