A prayer based on Church Dogmatics II.2 paragraph 32 Christ you are the one to whom we must look. You one from whom we must receive. You are the one to who we must strive. And you you are the one to whom we must testify. Give us grace to look, receive, strive and testify …
Friendship with GodJohn 15:9-17 Jesus says:As the Father has loved me, so I have love you; abide in my love.And a moment or two later he says:This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Jesus gives us a single idea about what being his follower amounts to: loving one …
A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (09/05/21): Friendship with God Read More »
A prayer of adoration based on Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2 paragraph 32 Loving God, we know what you are not. Your freedom is not caprice. Your mystery is not blindness toward us. Your righteousness is not merely assertion. You are not a tyrant. You never hate, nor are you ever indifferent. You will not …
A collect based on Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.2 paragraph 15.3 Loving God, we have no capacity of our own to know you, or to come close to you. But you come to us born of the Virgin Mary. That birth brings you close to us and gives us the means to know you. Grant …
Unlikely Eunuch, Improbable Philpp Acts 8:26-40 The Bible is full of improbable stories. Especially, there are stories of God bringing about unlikely outcomes from unpromising beginnings. We could make a long list of them: A child being born to Abraham and Sarah, when he was 100 and she was 90; The children of Israel delivered …
A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (02/05/21): Unlikely Eunuch Improbable Philipp Read More »
Corpus Delicti Acts 4:5-12 “Corpus delicti” is a Latin legal term. Translated is means, “The body of the crime.” It is the evidence that proves that a crime has been committed, which is necessary before anyone can be convicted of that crime. In the case of a murder, of course, that body of evidence is literally a …
A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (25/04/21): Corpus Delicti Read More »
Peter Preaches Acts 3:12-19 The book of Acts contains a collection of early sermons preached by the apostles in the weeks and years following Jesus’ resurrection. Luke recalls, for later Christians, what the first Church proclaimed. He records for us what those first Christians announced to the world. We are given the first public testimony to Christ …
A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter (18/04/21): Peter Preaches Read More »
Responding to the Resurrection Acts 4:32-35 Luke reports the aftermath of the first Easter, he tells us: With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Everything that follows in the Church’s history and in the lives of all the Christians begins with this and is build on …
A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter (11/04/21): Responding to the Resurrection Read More »
The Empty Tomb Mark 16:1-8 The first Easter morning is fundamentally different from every subsequent Easter morning. We don’t and we can’t approach the tomb as a place of disappointment and despair. There is no way for us to unknow what we have already heard about what the women find there. We already know what they do not know, …
A Sermon for Easter Day (04/04/21): The Empty Tomb Read More »
The Proclamation of the Cross John 18:16b-30 Executions are outside of our experience. There hasn’t been in an execution in this country for over 50 years. And for almost 100 years before that they had been done out of sight. So a public execution is something we can have no real knowledge of. But …
A Sermon for Good Friday (02/04/21): Proclamation of the Cross Read More »