Sermons on Reign of God (Page 3)

Born from Above

Photo by Hu Chen @ unsplash.com Genesis 12:1-4a Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 John 3:1-17 When I was a teenager, I was very certain about many things. I knew, for example, exactly how one was born again and I tried to help other people receive Jesus by saying the simple words, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” I didn’t realize that some people might just say that in order to amuse themselves, or in order to get rid of me,…

Salt of the Earth

Matthew 5:13-20 When I hear Jesus’ words to his disciples: “You are the salt of the earth: but if salt has lost its taste, How can its saltiness be restored? My brain goes contrary and asks: Just how can salt lose its taste? And of course, I’m thinking of those little salt granules We put on our food. To relate to Jesus’ teaching, it helps me To picture a salt lick out in a field; They’re put out for livestock.…

Discipleship = Stewardship

Photo: Around the Sea of Galilee, Matson Collection [Public domain] Matthew 4:12-23 Today we take a second look at discipleship. Last week we heard the call of the first disciples as told in John’s Gospel – two of John the Baptizer’s disciples intrigued by John’s description of him, asked Jesus where he was staying to which he replied, Come and see. They went and stayed with him. I reflected on what it means to stay with Jesus the Christ and…

God Calling

Photo by Andrew McKie on Pexels John 1:29-42 I wonder what the two disciples found when they went to see where Jesus was staying. I imagine he was probably living very simply like Ghandi, but just as likely he was living in a crowded household with no privacy. You can learn a lot about a person from the way they live in their own home, or the way they live in a communal home. Today’s gospel reading is about identity…

Hope

Photo by Kelly Sikkema @ unsplash.com Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:36-44 I read in the news this morning the sad story of Ron, a man in Maine, who rigged a pistol in his front door so that anyone who tried to enter would be shot.  Unfortunately, he made a mistake – I don’t know the details – but on Thanksgiving he walked into his own booby trap, was shot by the pistol and later died of his wounds. This…

A New Earth

Note: the audio starts in the middle of the sermon, about para 5 Isaiah 65:17-25  Luke 21:5-19 In today’s gospel reading, Jesus talks about the troubles that are to come. Scholars have often thought that this, and its parallel passages in the other gospels, were probably added later, after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in the year 70 CE, with words kind of put in Jesus’ mouth. That may be the case, but in the…

St Benedict

Photo by Danna Joy Images Luke 14:27–33 Today we are celebrating our patron saint, St. Benedict. Just as a quick reminder, Benedict was born towards the end of the 5th century, the son of a wealthy Italian family. He was sent to Rome to study, but found life in the city to be self-indulgent and immoral, so he retreated to the countryside and on the advice of a monk became a hermit, and lived in a cave for three years.…

Grateful

Photo by Timothy Eberle @unsplash.com 2 Timothy 2:8-15 Luke 17:11-19 The grateful Samaritan – the one person who comes back and thanks Jesus is a foreigner. This is great gospel reading to have in our Season of Gratitude, with the Gratitude Dinner coming up this Friday and the celebration of St. Benedict, our patron saint, next Sunday. So let’s start this morning by thinking about things we’re grateful for. I’m grateful for the Saturday night eucharist, for coffee, for my…

Grace and Gold

Photo by Shreyas Malavalli on unsplash.com “The world gives you so much pain and here you are making gold out of it… there is nothing purer.” Rupi Kaur Unfortunately, we were not able to record the first five to eight minutes of Bishop Mary’s sermon.