Sermon and Worship Resources

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Mark 1:29-39

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

One of my all-time favorite church magazine cartoons pictures a physician in his office, speaking with his bookkeeper. The subject of their conversation is a patient's bill, which apparently had been in the accounts receivable file for a long, long time. The bookkeeper says to the doctor, "He says that since you told him his recovery was a miracle, he sent his check to the church." Our passage fr...

2. Can Anything Good Come out of Our Town?

John 1:43-51

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Well, good, old Nathaniel. In a way, he's the mystery disciple of the New Testament. His name doesn't even rate a mention in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Only in John's gospel do we hear about the disciple with the parochial ideas about Galilean towns. Picture, if you will, our man Nathaniel. Like Peter, he is a fisherman by trade. He hails from Cana, another in a long line of undistinguished little h...

3. Can Teach, Can Do

Mark 1:21-28

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Every time I have ever studied this passage with other people, it seems to me that we have been all too willing to get ourselves distracted by the thought of first-century people walking around with what Mark called an "unclean spirit," which is rendered by the even scarier "demon" in some translations. Conversation about the passage often runs along the favorite twin therapeutic tracks of the twe...

4. Due for Renewal

Mark 2:13-22

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Every pastor, on occasion, feels the need to remind a congregation that we need not fear things that are new. Indeed, the apostle Paul declared that if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation ... things that are new ought to be things in which we feel free to take part. Once, the chair of a denominational committee on worship, when speaking of new things and strong opposition to them by congr...

5. Grand Opening

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Carefully the plans are laid. The property is purchased, the foundations are poured, the combination of bricks and sticks are put in their proper places, so that, after weeks of work and waiting, the building begins to take shape. Then, when the building is completed, a merchant makes his appearance on the scene, having long since made his purchasing plans and placed his orders for the first selec...

6. How Can This Be?

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

The sermon title suggests the human desire for an application of reason to a situation. The application of reason always seems to us to be the way through the murky unknown, some technological know-how which sets things in understandable categories, which downsizes the mysterium tremendum et fascinans to digestible bits of common wisdom. To ask a question like "How can this be?" or "Why me?" sugg...

7. How to Know What to Know

Mark 13:24-37

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

The television interviewer, having taken a full ninety seconds to plumb the depths of some complicated issue like abortion or the Supreme Court nominating process with two people representing opposing viewpoints, turns to one and says, "We're just about out of time. George, in the fifteen seconds we have left, just what is the future of Western civilization as you see it?" "We're just about out o...

8. I Went Down to the River to Pray

Mark 1:4-11

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Today is a good day to say a good word about baptism. I suppose any Sunday is really an appropriate day for a favorable word about baptism, but today we have heard scripture loaded with images of baptism, so it is a good day to speak about that which is often so close at hand that we may sometimes miss its significance. Psalm 29 is among the psalms that use the imagery of water to declare the tre...

9. Jesus at Home

Mark 2:1-12

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Have you ever used the phrase, "I felt right at home"? It's a pretty good phrase for purposes of describing some degree of comfort about a situation. I'd say Ichiro Suzuki makes himself right at home standing at first base. I'd say that Tom Brokaw was a broadcaster who was at home in front of a television camera. I know people who feel most at home when they are out tending their garden or working...

10. Just Say the Word

John 1:1-9, 10-18

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Up until the modern era, with the advent of two-way radios, when generals needed to communicate with their commanders in the field, the most reliable method was to dispatch a runner. This was true in peacetime as well as wartime. Kings who wanted to communicate with important people in their far-flung empires made use of runners. It worked in reverse as well. Those in the field, those who were ove...

11. Looking Up: Looking Out

Mark 9:2-9

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

This passage serves as a gift to the church as we prepare to enter into the season of Lent beginning with Ash Wednesday this coming week. At the outset, it is important to realize that this fantastic vision of the transfigured Jesus follows upon the hard prediction Jesus made concerning his own death: Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by...

12. Skin Game

Mark 1:40-45

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Let's think about skin for a minute. Skin is something very precious to us. It is in many ways the toughest organ of the human body, the primary line of defense, seemingly capable of renewing itself almost endlessly following cuts, bruises, even surgery and skin grafting. It can adjust to sunlight, making subtle changes in response to prolonged exposure. Skin is fundamental to our thinking about w...

13. The Thoughts of Our Hearts

Luke 2:22-40

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Luke wrote his gospel to a man we know only by name. He addresses him as "most excellent Theophilus." The gospel of Luke, unlike other gospels, was written for a person who was high in the Roman government — written during a time of religious persecution; and it was the hope of Luke that this would be read by those outside the faith so that they might learn that they had nothing to fear from the C...

14. Time’s A-Wasting

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Just when everything seems as normal as can be ... in fact, just when we almost break into wide yawns from the dull normalcy of it all, that's when something outside our control can break in with a word or experience that changes everything — perhaps forever. Do you remember when the earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay area in 1989, causing the famous collapse of the double-decker Bay Bridge? It...

15. When Did This Start? — Part 1

Mark 1:1-8

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

The four gospels each have very different ways of introducing the story about Jesus. Matthew begins his gospel with a long genealogy, tracing Jesus' lineage — "son of David, son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1-16) from the time of Abraham through fourteen generations, through the line of Mary's husband, Joseph, all the way to Jesus. Luke's gospel begins differently, first with stories of the foretelling...

16. When Did This Start? — Part 2

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

This is the second of a little two-part series on the beginnings of the gospel about Jesus from perspectives of the not-so-usual Christmas gospels of Mark and John. The idea of using such passages, apart from the fact that they appear in the suggested lectionary passages to be read on these Sundays, is to jar us a little bit out of our comfortable, acculturated vision of the season leading up to C...

17. Worth the Wait

Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

Church doesn't get much more joyful than this, does it? Christmas Day! Our scripture speaks of joy, as well as our other carols today. How could this service have possibly started with any other carol than "Joy To the World"? Often, in anticipation of Sunday services through the rest of the year, those involved in planning worship scour the lectionary for scholarly comments on Bible passages in q...

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