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Sermon
Marc Kolden
Pentecost is the third great Christian festival. On Christmas we celebrated the birth of Christ, our Savior. On Easter we celebrated his victorious resurrection from death. And today we remember Christ's giving of the Holy Spirit. Our story from the gospel of John takes place on Easter evening, after the disciples had discovered that the tomb was empty and Jesus had appeared to Mary Magdalene. Jes...
Sermon
Larry Powell
"It is my heart-warming and world-embracing hope," said Mark Twain, "that all of us - the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, and the savage - may eventually be gathered in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone." Mark Twain obviously held a great dislike for the telephone, probably becau...
Sermon
Leonard H. Budd
Even in the room's darkness Rachel's face was seen streaked with tears. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Rachel had been an un-named disciple since Jesus had first visited her village. They had already celebrated two passovers. It had been that long ago. She was not important in the way that Simon and his brothers were important. She could not speak eloquently, nor command evil spir...
Sermon
John M. Braaten
Easter has happened. Jesus, crucified on Friday is risen from the dead, and from that time-shattering event he sets out. To do what? What shall be the first item on his agenda? We don't know what our Lord did between the early morning appearance to Mary Magdalene and the evening, but we do know that revealing himself to the disciples was high on his list of priorities. One question which could be ...
5. Easter Power
John 20:19-23, John 20:24-31
Sermon
Harry N. Huxhold
Storms that knock out electrical systems make us mindful of how dependent we are upon power. High winds deprive us of power. When we do not lose power in devastating storms we are most grateful, realizing how dependent we have become on the utility companies. However, it is significant that the primary definitions of power do not relate to the matter of energy or force. The first definitions o...
Sermon
James Angell
The Los Angeles summer of 1965 produced the frustration-generated Watts riots - or Watts "revolt" as I was taught to call those days. That was the year our family went to England for a pulpit exchange. We were in London the day after Adlai Stevenson dropped dead on Oxford Street, the victim of a heart attack. Mr. Stevenson never became president, but he won a special place in the hearts of the Ame...
Sermon
Don M. Aycock
Suppose you had just said goodbye to someone you love. If so, you would know the feeling of remorse encapsulating Jesus' disciples after his death. Those disciples were left in a state of total chaos. All along Jesus had tried to make them see that his presence among them was only temporary. He had given them clues about his destiny with such words as You will seek me and you will not find me; whe...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
As God sent Jesus, so Jesus sends us. We minister in the world under God's "say-so." Comedians Dan Akroyd and the late John Belushi teamed up to create a host of memorably wacky characters. But few could top the absurdity of Jake and Elwood, the Blues Brothers. These two genially corrupt, amiably amoral bozos are sent out on an ill-fated fundraising mission for their old parochial school by a fie...
9. Let It Breathe...
John 20:19-31
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
What does it mean to be "spiritual?" In a day when "spirituality" is in and "organized religion" is out, it behooves the church to seek a biblical definition and theology of "spiritual." To this end, breathing is more than a means of propulsion; it''s a spiritual principle. (The following discussion of "The Kiss of God" has been developed more directly in my Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apo...
10. Panic Room
John 20:19-23
Sermon
King Duncan
[While King Duncan is enjoying a well deserved retirement we are going back to his earliest sermons and renewing them. The newly modernized sermon is shown first and below, for reference sake, is the old sermon. We will continue this updating throughout the year bringing fresh takes on King's best sermons.] The title of today’s sermon, “Panic Room,” has nothing to do with the IRS forms some of you...
Sermon
King Duncan
Psychologist Wayne Dyer, author of many self-help books, tells of attending his twenty-year high school reunion. At that reunion he met a former classmate on whom he’d had a secret crush. She was beautiful and confident even in high school, and Dyer could never muster up the courage to ask her out. To his surprise, at the reunion this woman whom he had yearned to date confessed to Dyer that she’d ...
Sermon
J. Howard Olds
The message I want to share with you today is contained in an ancient liturgy of the Church. We call it the passing of the peace. “The Peace of Christ be with you.” “And also with you.” It is the peace of God which passes all understanding that I want to offer you today. I. May the Peace of Christ Rule in Our Minds At dark last Easter Sunday I found myself tired, pleased, satisfied, and at peace...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
In a few short years, Dan Brown’s 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code, became one of the most widely read books of all time. The 2006 Ron Howard Hollywood movie starring Tom Hanks only made the novel all the more popular. Why such a blockbuster for a novel about Jesus? Because it was well-written? Because it was well-researched? No, the real reason The Da Vinci Code caught fire was because it served ...
Sermon
Stephen M. Crotts
Have you ever noticed how we preachers often promote the early church as if it were the ideal? "Why, they did a miracle a day in the early church." "When they had a prayer meeting, everyone came!" " They spoke in Greek then!" (As if it were some sort of superior language!) On and on we can go browbeating ourselves by comparison. Yet, when one really studies the Bible, he discovers that early beli...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
Lewis Grizzard is one of my favorite columnists. He isn't as vulgar in his writing as he is in his speaking. Even in his speaking, if you can abide his vulgarity, you can come out with a pearl worth the risk of dirtying your own mind. A few years ago he wrote of missing the family Thanksgiving dinner. It was at an uncle's house out in the country. Country folks like to eat dinner early in the mid...
Sermon
Richard Gribble
"In the seventh year of his reign, two days before his sixty-fifth birthday, in the presence of a full consistory of cardinals, Jean Marie Barette, Pope Gregory XVII, signed an instrument of abdication, took off the Fisherman's ring, handed his seal to the Cardinal Camerlengo and made a curt speech of farewell." So begins the power novel The Clowns of God, the second volume of a trilogy of tales a...
Sermon
Lee Griess
There are some jokes that are just too terrible to tell from the pulpit. A pastor would have to be nuts to try to slip such a story by his congregation. For example, there is a story of a man who went to a psychiatrist one time with a sleep disorder. "Doc," he says, "I've been having trouble sleeping because of weird dreams. For example, last night I dreamed that I was a wigwam." "Oh yes," the ps...
Sermon
Mark Ellingsen
It's Pentecost Sunday, a day when we celebrate the birth of the Church and the giving of the Holy Spirit, as our lesson from Acts (2:1-21) reports. But the Bible makes it clear that it was not just on that first Pentecost that the Holy Spirit was given. It happened to some in Old Testament times (Judges 6:34; 1 Samuel 11:6; 16:13). However, the Spirit was also given during Jesus' own life on earth...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Happy Natal Day, church! As a kid did you ever terrorize a sibling by scuffing your feet on the carpet and walking towards your “prey” with an index finger pointing at them? The threat, of course, was “static electricity.” If you touched you brother or sister, it meant a small but smarting little zap. A small shock — big fun! A local grocery store (actually, the local Orcas Island Supermarket wh...
Sermon
King Duncan
Have you ever been afraid? Of course, you have. Is anyone in the room afraid to fly? A woman on a flight was suffering from the jitters. This was not her first flight, but still she had never been able to relax while flying on a plane. It didn’t help that her current flight was delayed twice before getting off the ground because of mechanical problems. Then, after they were aloft, the lights beg...
Sermon
King Duncan
A man tells of visiting a college which had for its students’ protection, security call boxes every few hundred feet. If you were wandering around the campus at night and felt uneasy about somebody following you, you could hit the button on that call box and have a security officer come investigate immediately. On one of these phones hung a sign that said, “Out of Order.” Underneath the “Out of ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
The British writer Arthur C. Clarke proposed three “laws” of prediction that are known as “Clarke’s Three Laws.” Here they are: Law 1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Law 2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a littl...
23. Speaking Peace
John 20:19-31
Sermon
John Smylie
On the evening of that day, that first Easter Day, the disciples were gathered together, but as yet none of them had seen their risen Lord. There they were behind locked doors. We can begin to imagine the thoughts they held within their minds, we can almost sense and feel the depth of their fears, and we can listen for their quiet conversation among themselves as they questioned everything. There ...
24. So Send I You
John 20:19-23
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
One of the fastest growing, most profitable investment ventures in today’s economy is . . . . anything having anything to do with security. You couldn’t have lost money in the last twenty years if you invested in storage or security: national security, personal security, home security, financial security, Internet security. The dangers of this world seem to be breathing hotter and closer down our ...
25. He's Back
John 20:19-23
Sermon
David O. Bales
Most Christians know about the Holy Spirit’s power granted one morning in Jerusalem seven weeks after Jesus’ resurrection. It occurred on the Jewish Festival of Passover recorded in Acts 2. Many Christians don’t know what John 20 reports. This text is about Jesus’ giving the Holy Spirit before the exciting spiritual event at the Passover Festival. Seven weeks before Pentecost we’re with Jesus lat...
Showing 1 to 25 of 116 results