Posts Categorized: sermons

The Little Mermaid: The Simile of Adolescence

Imagine that one of your friends invites you to join him or her to see a movie with a group of people you don’t really know.  After the movie you grab a cup of coffee together and someone asks, “What did you think of the movie?”  If you admit that the movie was really good,… Read more »

Monster’s Inc: A Child’s Perspective

A couple of weeks ago I brought my daughters to see Monster’s Inc during its rerelease in the theaters.  I noticed that in the opening scene, both Isabelle and Annaleigh were watching the movie through their fingers.  The opening scene is cultivated in such a way to make you think that something scary is about… Read more »

The Dance of the Divinely Human and Humanly Divine (Luke 2:41-52)

The day after Christmas is nearly unavoidably anticlimactic.  The presents have been opened, television programming seems blasphemously normal, and mom and dad get to experience what presents the children actually enjoy and which presents they said they wanted but have not yet bothered to acknowledge.  This year on the day after Christmas, Christie and I… Read more »

Jesus' Wish List

Advent is a time of preparation.  The first week of Advent we lit the candle of hope.  Hope begins with the acknowledgment of brokenness.  The world is broken.  The shooting in Oregon and the massacre in Connecticut unveiled a reasonless exercise of evil, which defies explanation.  This is not the first time that violence surrounded… Read more »

Jesus’ Wish List

Advent is a time of preparation.  The first week of Advent we lit the candle of hope.  Hope begins with the acknowledgment of brokenness.  The world is broken.  The shooting in Oregon and the massacre in Connecticut unveiled a reasonless exercise of evil, which defies explanation.  This is not the first time that violence surrounded… Read more »

Christmas is Not Your Birthday: Giving Up on Perfect

Not until I became a father have I ever felt pressure to offer the perfect Christmas.  My wife Christie may tell you that still after becoming a father I’m not quite concerned about offering the perfect Christmas.  With that said, some of us can put an amazing amount of pressure upon ourselves to offer the… Read more »

Christmas Is Not Your Birthday: Expect a Miracle

          One of my favorite Christmas traditions is singing “Silent Night” by candlelight at the end of the Christmas Eve service.  Not only is Silent Night one of the most theologically rich hymns of the Christian tradition.  Not only does it sound beautiful on organ or guitar or with no accompaniment at… Read more »

The God who is, was, and is to come

There are some things I can only enjoy once: a mediocre football game, The Da Vinci Code, an easy puzzle.  The first time was enough because now knowing the ending or the outcome, these things lose their appeal.  I’m no longer invested because the unknown ending was its only offering.  Now some things I could… Read more »

What is Good?

God looked upon creation and saw that it was good.  For “good” to be a part of existence from the very beginning, we seem to still have a difficult time defining what “good” is.  There are several different ways we discern if something is good or not.  First, and in no particular order, we define… Read more »

What if it’s a really small camel?

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” Jesus says.  The disciples are astonished.  We have a problem here, but it isn’t without a solution.  If the goal is for a camel to go through the eye… Read more »