Sermon and Worship Resources

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Deuteronomy 18:14-22

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

Most people have a rather warped view of the biblical prophets. We have tended to see them as rather like a man I saw outside Saint Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, dressed in what looked like bed sheets, wearing a beard, with a sign around his neck, and carrying a staff, and shouting things to anyone who happened to look his way. He reminded me of some of the cartoons I had seen in the New Yorker m...

2. And Now For Something Completely Different

Isaiah 43:14-28

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

At the end of a week-long retreat in a mountain camp setting a somewhat different kind of worship service was taking place. It was at the end of a day that had been set aside for introspection and talking about feelings of self-worth. There had been some discussion about how to deal with feelings of guilt and the need to feel forgiven, and how it is often easier to forgive someone else than to for...

3. Break Through

2 Samuel 7:1-17

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

In the reading for today, King David calls the court prophet, Nathan, to him to propose a building project. David considers it unseemly that while he lives in a palace of paneled luxury, the ark of the covenant is still in a tent. Now the ark of the covenant, you should know, was a very important object. It was essentially a box, carved and decorated, and fitted with long pole-handles so it could ...

4. Call Waiting

1 Samuel 3:1--4:1

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

Samuel was one of those children born rather late in the life of a woman who dearly wanted a child. To have a child was Hannah’s most earnest prayer. Indeed the writers of the scriptures regarded a child born late in life as an indication of God’s special favor. Hannah, Samuel’s mother, must have thought so too, and while he was still an infant, as soon as he was weaned, he was offered into the se...

5. Comfort

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

"Comfort! Comfort my people, says your God." How wonderful those words sound to us. How many times we feel the need for comfort. How often we need an assuring and tender word to ease the hurt we feel. Every year about this time we hear those wonderful prophetic words sung in Handel’s Messiah, or read in our churches from the portion of scripture that biblical scholars call "Second Isaiah," to dist...

6. Coming Down The Mountain

2 Kings 2:1-18

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

There is a story that a university in Scotland once wished to honor a scholar who had done some significant inquiry into the life and work of one of its own most illustrious former scholars, the 16th century Scottish reformer, John Knox. The tradition in that and several other universities was that, if possible, a cap belonging to the subject of the study - in this case John Knox - would be given ...

7. Feeling Down And Looking Up

Isaiah 40:1-31

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

The scripture for today is from the portion of Isaiah which scholars know as Deutero-Isaiah, or Second Isaiah - chapters 40 to 55. Those chapters certainly were not written by the eighth century B.C.E. prophet whose name it bears, but rather by an anonymous observer of the events in the closing years of Babylonian rule, and who interpreted the meaning of those events to the Jewish exiles in Babylo...

8. Give Us A New Name!

Isaiah 61:1-11

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

What’s in a name? Apparently more than we sometimes realize. Our names are important to us. They carry the message of who we are. Parents think carefully of what to name a new child. How is it going to sound when that child grows to adulthood? Will it be dignified? Distinctive? Pleasant? We want names that will not be embarrassing or cause people to make jokes of them. Probably all of us have been...

9. Just A Whisper

Isaiah 9:1-7

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

A newborn child is such a small and fragile thing. Can it have the power to change anything? In the eighth century B.C.E., Ahaz, King of Judah, faced the armies of two kings advancing to attack Jerusalem, and a state of mind bordering on panic seized the king and the people. Into that climate of fear came the prophet Isaiah, who met Ahaz one day as he was inspecting the water supply of Jerusalem i...

10. Remember Who(se) You Are

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

Water! Water is the most distinguishing characteristic of our planet from the others in our solar system and, from all we know to date, from any other heavenly body in all creation. Water covers most of the earth, and is the reason that, from a vantage point in space, it has a distinctly blue color. Most school children know that now, thanks to a very popular NASA photograph taken from space of t...

11. Send Me!

Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

Certain events - often cataclysmic ones - stand out in bold relief in our memory. Those of you who are over 35 or so, think of where you were or what you were doing when you heard the news that President John Kennedy had been shot. You may not remember the date - it was November 22, 1963 - but you will probably remember other things about that day. Or if you are sixty or more think of what you wer...

12. The Scandal Of Redeeming Love

Hosea 2:2-23

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

It seems that we have developed a tabloid mentality. That is to say, we seem to have developed an overzealous fascination for information about the private lives of public people. The real or supposed exploits of actors and actresses, politicians, entertainers, athletes or business moguls appear in lurid headlines on papers and magazines that are more interested in sensation than news. Photographe...

13. Wade In The Water

2 Kings 5:1-27

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

The lives of the rich and famous hold a strange fascination for those of us who do not find ourselves in that category. From a very surface view it is easy to envy their glamorous and opulent lifestyles. How we’d like to be like them. We could really enjoy having their money, or their influence, or the adulation of the people who crowd around them. How nice it would be to have the athletic prowess...

14. We Know Jonah

Jonah 3:1-10

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

In the spring and summer of 1992, the world was shocked by reports of atrocities and pictures of concentration camps populated by emaciated captives in the strife-torn lands that had been Yugoslavia. No longer held together by a totalitarian regime, ancient feuds and animosities flared into violence and then full-scale war. Heinous acts were committed by Serbian government forces against people of...

15. Why Don’t You Send Somebody?

Isaiah 63:7--64:12

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

In the entrance of the magnificent modern cathedral of St. Michael in Coventry, England, a most enigmatic statement is emblazoned upon the floor in large gleaming brass letters that demand to be read. There is no escaping it, for one has to walk over it to enter the nave. It says, "TO THE GLORY OF GOD THIS CHURCH BURNT, NOVEMBER 14, 1941." The incredible irony of that statement is what grabs the a...

16. You Can Go Home Again!

Jeremiah 3:6-4:4

Sermon

Frederick C. Edwards

In 1939, just as the world was teetering on the brink of a war, a world fair was being held in New York. In a sense it tried to push away for a time the threat of impending conflict with lightness and brightness and visions of a beautiful world to come. Nations from all over the world came - the large ones and the small ones. The tiny eastern European nation of Lithuania had an impressive pavillio...

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