Sermons

Station-Centered Worship on a Weekend of Rest Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, 8/31/2025 Jesus reminds Matthew’s community, and ours as well: 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and […]

We must be alert to the people and places in our daily lives marginalized by unjust systems. We must model a lived and practiced empathy for everyone and everything in our ecosystems that results in a felt compassion by our neighbors.  And we must act. We must act in ways that make our neighbors seen, heard, valued, and credentialed in every capacity. 

Just like the Acts Community, we are living through unparalleled change. And just like them, we find our resources stretched, our structure challenged as we seek to be fed by the Word, to share in the fullness of life with one another, and to help bring about the kin-dom Christ bid come.  And just like the Acts Community, we have leaders, deacons, with gifts, and voices, and love to help us discern our needs, and better still, allocate our spiritual resources to achieve our desired end.

Here’s what Jesus is critiquing: Greed and apathy. Jesus frowns on those who hoard abundance.  The rich farmer’s entire value system is inwardly-focused. He gathers his resources without gratitude for the God that provides such abundance, without acknowledgement of the sharecroppers he’s exploited to accumulate his wealth, and without any intention to use such resources to better the lives of his neighbors. 

A pageant is the acting out of a story or stories we know, and many of the stories you’ll hear today, you might have first learned in Sunday School or Vacation Bible School, or from reading your own Bibles. However, when we tell the story today, we’ll be acting it out and there may be a few things added which aren’t in the Bible.  There is no script, so it’s kind of what you call an improv…in other words, we’ll be making it up as we go along! 

When You Pray Pentecost Seven, 7/27/2025 Bob Stillerman Luke 11:1-13 Bulletin | Wyatt Pearce Baptism Insert | Sermon Text Luke 11:1-13 11:1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 11:2 so he said […]