Sermon and Worship Resources

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Acts 8:9-25

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... Press, 1987), pp. 32. 4. My colleague Will Willimon is the author of this quote as he calls attention to “the church demanded reprentance” in 8:22, in Acts: Interpretation — A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988), p. 70. 5. Marion Soards, Thomas Pozeman, and Kendall McCabe make this observation in Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (New York: Abingdon Press, 1994), p. 102.

2. The Battle of the Wisdoms

James 3:13-18

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... : Abingdon Press, 1984), p. 28. 3. Earl S. Johnson, Jr., James, Peter, John, and Jude: Basic Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988), p. 35. At this point a warning is in order for the preacher. As Marion Soards, Thomas Dozeman, and Kendall McCabe have pointed out in Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, After Pentecost 2, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), the picture James paints is not meant to be a scare tactic. The preacher can "lapse into mere moralism or pious drivel" (p ...

3. Taking Something Up for Lent

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... time to give up so much as it's our opportunity to add on, opening ourselves more fully to that unpredictable Spirit which blows where it chooses and that we don't know where it comes from or where it goes. I learned this about Lent from Dr. Kendall K. McCabe, former Dean of Faculty at United Theological Seminary, who taught his students in worship class that the real spiritual discipline in Lent isn't to give up a bad habit that one shouldn't practice at any time, but to give up something good in order to ...

4. My dear friends, let us play.

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

Yes, you heard me correctly. Now is a time for play. In fact, today the church begins that time of the year when we do our most serious playing. And playing is a serious business, you know. Ask any teacher of children. Better still, watch children at play. No wonder they are tired at the end of the day. They work hard at playing. They take it seriously. Play is the child's laboratory for learning about life. Children who have never played at being grown-up tend to be handicapped in some way when they have ...

5. The First Sunday In Lent

Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

The old songs may be the best songs, but you can't always believe them. I have in mind, particularly, that mountain spiritual, "Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley." The first part of it is true enough. Jesus walked this lonesome valley, Had to walk it by himself. Oh, nobody else could walk it for him; He had to walk it by himself. Those lines could almost describe what we heard in the Gospel reading for today - the story of Jesus alone in the wilderness, enduring the temptations of the devil. It is with the ...

6. The Third Sunday in Lent

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

Two weeks ago we went with our Lord into the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil. We saw him hungry and alone, exposed to all the power of the demonic world. You may remember we learned, through that experience, Christ understands the struggles that go on in the garden of every human heart. In the lessons that follow during Lent we are helped to see how Christ's facing of temptation equipped him to help others find the joy of knowing they are daughters and sons of God. The woman at the well in ...

7. The Sunday of the Passion

Matthew 26:14--27:66

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

The Sunday of the Passion!? It was a lot simpler in the good old days when it was Palm Sunday. That was easy to understand. You had a straightforward story about the entry into Jerusalem, and because of all those children shouting "Hosanna," there was a good excuse to do the baptism of infants or confirmation of youth. We could all sing "The Palms," and it was very clear what the day was about. Sort of a practice run for Easter when we would pull out all the stops. But now the Sunday of the Passion! No ...

8. Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

A popular form of education in the lower grades, for many years, has been the procedure called "Show and Tell." It has invaded some pulpits as well and preachers will do object-centered sermons; they hold or employ some particular item easily seen and understood by the congregation in order to gain attention and, hopefully, make a point that will be remembered. It was something of that nature Jesus was doing on the night of the Last Supper, as it is recorded for us by the evangelist John. In some ways, it ...

9. Good Friday

John 18:1-19:42

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

After this solemn reading of the passion narrative, one stands uncertainly to preach, because surely the power of the story itself moves us by its very rehearsal. It touches each of us at a point unique to ourselves, in this hour of our particular need as we hear it again. But someone may be asking why do we do this twice in one week. It was only this past Sunday we heard the whole passion narrative according to Matthew, and now today we come to hear John tell it all over again! But it isn't the same story ...

10. The Third Sunday of Easter

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

Visiting Mrs. Campbell was always great fun for a child in southern Maryland. Mrs. Campbell was from Scotland, and talked as no one else the child had ever heard. Besides that, she had had marvelous adventures and been to lands the child had only read about and seen pictures of. She had danced in the Vienna of Franz Joseph and crossed the Atlantic in the days of the great ocean liners. Her eyes would sparkle as she entertained the child with her reminiscences, and it was plain, as she talked, she was ...

11. The Fifth Sunday of Easter

John 14:1-4

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

Hearing this Gospel lesson read on a Sunday morning may come as a shock to many of us. It is not the setting we are used to. "In my Father's house are many rooms" is a phrase we tend to associate almost exclusively with funerals, and small wonder, since, in many churches, that is or has been the only Gospel lesson appointed to be read at the burial of the dead. Here on a spring morning, with the trees in bud and new life popping out everywhere, we have to remember funerals we have attended and heard those ...

12. The Seventh Sunday of Easter

John 17:1-5

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

"Glory" is a major word in John's Gospel. At the very beginning, in what scholars call the prologue, we are told "we beheld his glory," and then the rest of the Gospel shows how it was done. This past Thursday we celebrated the feast of the Ascension, that occasion which emphasizes the glorification of Christ - he has been raised above all things and is Lord of all. Today in the Gospel we stand between events, for we are listening to Jesus pray on the night before his death, and he is already speaking of ...

13. Ascension Day

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

For forty days we have been celebrating the marvel and the mystery of the Easter event. Some of our number spent Lent as a time of special preparation for baptism and confirmation, while the rest of us prepared to remember our baptisms and renew our baptismal vows. We all participated in the death and resurrection of Christ through our baptism. Since then we have been exploring some of the meanings of that dying and rising for the Christian life. Now we are almost at the end of the Great Fifty Days. In a ...

14. Advent 1

Matthew 24:36-51, Romans 13:8-14, Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122:1-9

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