Sermons on Life of Christ (Page 12)

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Transfiguration

I’ve always been a bit bothered by this gospel. I can understand transformation – when one thing gets changed into another – and in the spiritual life we constantly seek to be transformed into the Christlike beings we were created to be. But transfiguration has seemed fairly pointless. Why would God go to the trouble of changing Jesus’ appearance for a brief time with only three witnesses who were later sworn to secrecy? This year it makes more sense to…

Prayer of Assent

This morning’s gospel reading comes from the very beginning of Mark’s gospel. Jesus was beginning his ministry, and we are told that he got up early in the morning and went to a deserted place to pray.  Mark doesn’t tell us anything about how he prayed, but we can imagine that this was a regular practice of Jesus’. He rose early in the morning to pray. Prayer, contemplation or meditation are fundamental to the spiritual life. Prayer was foundational to…

The Light of Hope

Each day on my way to work I get to have alone time with God. And, one of my daily prayers is a verse from Psalm 51, which reads: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Today’s gospel story is Mark’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry following His baptism in the River Jordan. Immediately preceding the story, Jesus has just called Peter, Andrew, James and John from their boats to…

Pageantry and passion

There are at least two ways of approaching Scripture. I’m going to loosely categorize them as the Engineer’s way and the English Major’s way. The hypothetical engineer wants to know the facts of the situation and how these fit with other known facts; the English Major is more interested in metaphoric layers of symbolism in the passage. This morning’s reading is especially troubling to the engineer. There are more unanswered questions than there are certainties with this narrative. Where did…

God Likes Us!

In the Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge the miserable and cold-hearted miser is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Marley, who also spent his life making money and exploiting the poor. Marley warns Scrooge that if he doesn’t change his ways he will, like Marley, be damned. But in order to give him one last chance at redemption, Scrooge is visited by three spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost…

Life in Death

Today’s parable comes from the final section of teaching material in Matthew’s gospel. It’s in a section that, had he used subtitles, Matthew might have called “Authority.” Jesus is already in Jerusalem, his triumphal entry on the donkey just happened and the religious leaders are doing everything they can to trap him and to diminish his authority in the sight of the people. It’s a plan that’s not going so well. So Jesus tells a very pointed story. The owner…