Sermon and Worship Resources

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Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

Who were they -- these travelers from the mysterious East, who sometime after the birth of the baby arrive in Bethlehem with expensive gifts? They appear for a moment and are quickly gone. The text calls them wise men. They are known variously as magi, astrologers, astronomers, philosophers, mystics or scientists whose interests stretched far beyond Israel. Tradition has assigned them names and ra...

2. Blessed Among Women

Luke 1:39-56

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

The Gospel of Luke, above all books of the New Testament, is about women. It reads as if a woman might have written it. It contains intimate details which hardly would have occurred to a man. It begins with the birth of John the Baptist, focusing on Elizabeth, his mother. The next major section is Mary's story. To her we will shortly return. There follows the prophecy of an old woman named Anna. W...

3. Bowing Before The Mystery

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

Not everything important can be understood. There are some things we understand now we didn't ten years ago. Because we travel in space we know more about what is out there. Because we have picked the atom apart we know more about what is down here. Having beaten back the borders of both inner and outer space we often assume that everything is understandable, nothing is ultimately mysterious, and ...

4. Can We Really Love Our Enemies

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

I am often uncomfortable when someone tells me they love me. I am not talking about an honest affirmation, but about a critic who has just taken my hide off and concludes the shellacking with an account of her godly affection. "Brother Bayer, you are a rotten, no good, pagan, secular-humanist, but I want you to know that because I am Christian and I love you." Thanks just the same, but I'd rather ...

5. Christ in the Temple

Luke 2:41-52

Illustration

Charles H. Bayer

There is a famous oil painting called "Christ Teaching In The Temple." The painting gets it wrong. It comes from an era when religious people were still uneasy with the notion that Jesus was like the rest of us. In this picture he is standing in the midst of the elders looking very wise, obviously delivering a lecture. He is talking and pointing and they are listening. He had, no doubt, appeared t...

6. Defining The Mission

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

One of the marvelous gifts I have been given is the capacity to tell at a glance what somebody is like. I have no trouble seeing a person for the first time and identifying all her faults. What is more, in a split second I can tell you what she ought to be doing. Like one of Gilbert and Sullivan's characters: Of everybody's weaknesses I know a thing or two, I can tell a woman's age in half a minu...

7. For All The Saints

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

There are games theologians play. One of them is called, "I am no more modern than thou." I've played that game well. I make no apology for believing that the Lord didn't stop communicating when the last pages of the New Testament were completed. I believe some things written in our day are just as authentic as anything written in the first century. I cringe when old time religion means rigid, irr...

8. Leveling the Landscape

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

The road to the manger is not an Interstate. Nor is the journey sentimental. The path is decorated neither with candy canes nor red-nosed reindeer. There are no shortcuts. The Advent journey begins in a darkness so deep you can see the stars. From there it leads by the Jordan River and its stern prophet, John. If we could only get to the babe without having to hear the Baptist cry, "Repent!" But ...

9. Mary Ponders

Luke 2:8-20

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

Our most important conversations are often with ourselves. What is it that goes through your mind in the midnight watches, and will not let you go? Some people chew on revenge, rehearse angry conversations, gnaw on old grudges and cannot sleep. I know people who have held onto the same debilitating bitterness for decades. It is the sole topic of their with-themselves conversations night after nigh...

10. Mary Ponders

Luke 2:1-7, Luke 2:8-20

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

11. On Getting Out Of The Way

Luke 3:1-20, Luke 3:21-38

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

Americans are fascinated with being the best. Young people in warpaint and costume are regularly seen running up and down the sidelines at sporting events, index fingers thrust in the air, shouting, "We're number one! We're number one!" Who, after all, wants to be less than the best? But wait a minute! I know people who love to sing, but won't utter a note because they don't sound like Pavoratti. ...

12. Plain Talk

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

Two men were traveling by light airplane to a business meeting in Alaska. Somewhere over the tundra the plane's motor failed and they were forced down. When they returned home each wrote an article for his favorite magazine about the resulting crisis. One was an avid outdoorsman and his article was titled, "Survival In The Frozen North." The other was very religious and his article was titled, "Ho...

13. Professor Bum

Luke 4:14-30

Illustration

Charles H. Bayer

Two businessmen were traveling by train to an important business meeting. In the seat opposite them was an old man with a shaggy beard, dressed in a tattered sweater and jeans. Throughout the ride the two told each other crude jokes about bums and tramps, with particular reference to the chap in the next seat. When they arrived at the meeting they discovered this "tramp" was a world-class scholar ...

14. Sometimes It's Simple

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

Do you ever feel religion is complicated beyond belief? A very pious chap was once explaining to a friend the difference between his denomination and another with which his had been at swordpoints for centuries. "One group believes you are baptized into Christ, and the other believes you are baptized in Christ," he said. "There have been strife, arguments and battles over the issue for as long as ...

15. Sow's Ears And Silk Purses

John 2:1-11

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

The story of Jesus turning water into wine has long been a puzzle. It was not just a bit of wine he produced, but a tank full! Those committed to abstinence at best and temperance at least find it hard to imagine Jesus beginning his ministry with such an invitation to drunkenness. Nor is it much comfort to construe the wine as unfermented grape juice. In the first place, the Greek word is wine, an...

16. The Limits Of Love

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

Toward the end of the Old Testament history, a controversy arose about how far God's grace and care extended. The real question was not put in those metaphysical terms, but took shape as the Jewish people thought about how far their love extended. Some held that in order to maintain the purity of worship and faith it was necessary to eliminate all foreign influences. Cited in support of this argum...

17. Two Great Men and Two Simple Women

Luke 1:39-45

Illustration

Charles H. Bayer

Every year the president of the United States meets with influential people. Leaders of other States. Together they discuss big things, things of import and influence. But perhaps these great men do not have an iota of the influence on the world as did two simple women, who met for three months at the home of one of them somewhere in the hill country of Judah, and talked. From their long conversat...

18. What To Do With A Self-willed Child

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

Rearing children is never easy. My worst nightmare is having to go back and do it again. Grandchildren are super. We love to have them visit. We can spoil them rotten, and in two or three days they go home! I spend a considerable part of my week listening to parents worry about their children. Either they are lazy, or they are into heaven knows what. They are stupid, or too smart for their own go...

19. When It Is Dark Enough

Luke 21:5-38

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

On clear summer nights my wife and I often stretch out on the deck of our Maine cabin scanning the skies for satellites. While it might be dark at ground level, neither satellites nor stars appear until the sky is black. The ancient Persians put it this way: "When it is dark enough you can see the stars." At the graveside of his brother, the agnostic Robert Ingersoll, said, "In the darkest night h...

20. When Your Nets Are Empty

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

May the good Lord save me from perpetual whiners; people who can be counted on to tell you how bad everything is. You don't dare ask how they feel or how they sense the world is going unless you have an afternoon to spend listening to a catalogue of human miseries. I once knew a woman who called me if she happened to feel good, because she always felt bad the day after she felt good and wanted me ...

21. Why Be Good?

Luke 6:37-42

Sermon

Charles H. Bayer

There are a few things religion -- almost any religion -- can be counted on to affirm. There are standards of conduct and piety, differences between right and wrong, obligations and responsibilities which are so clearly stated nothing is left to chance. Religion will always find a way to define what the deity requires, and to cite the rewards and the punishments for right or wrong conduct. The pe...

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