Sermon and Worship Resources

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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 meaning...

2. 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 narrat...

3. 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 Jes...

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 learnin...

5. 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 ...

6. 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 read...

7. The Fourth Sunday in Lent

Matthew 20:17-19

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

Power. We hear a lot about that today. We are concerned about the proliferation of nuclear power. Social activists are concerned about empowering the disadvantaged in our communities. We want to limit the power of the government in the management of our private lives. And, of course, we want to protect whatever power we already have. Power. The ability to get things done, to make things happen. We...

8. The Resurrection of Our Lord

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

Today is a time of special joy for us because some of our congregation have participated in Christ's resurrection through the sacrament of Holy Baptism, and the rest of us have (or will) renew our baptismal promises as we remember we have died and been raised with Christ. We will find a new pleasure in sharing the Eucharistic banquet with one another and our risen Lord. The alleluias will bubble o...

9. The Second Sunday in Lent

Matthew 17:1-13

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

There are moments magnified in memory and they give meaning to all that comes after them. They didn't seem too important at the time, or else they were important in a way we never understood until later. It must have been like that for Peter and James and John as they thought back on their experience on the Mount of Transfiguration. It was a significant moment, all right, no doubt about that. Jesu...

10. 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 be...

11. The Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 14:15-31

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

"Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile," the weary black slave would sing to the hot southern night, giving expression to the condition of having been taken from home and family and subjected to the power of death. Although none of us has known the bitterness of that dehumanizing experience, the sung lament has surely expressed our own agony of soul from time to time, as we confront isolation a...

12. 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. So...

13. 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 equip...

14. 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 wo...

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