The Cold and Dark Season — Hopping Hadrian’s Wall
This week’s sermon from North Presbyterian, Kalamazoo Click here to see the bulletin of the liturgy, including the biblical text After an unseasonably mild autumn, it’s finally beginning to feel […]
Category Archives: Sermon
The Unquenchable Fire — Hopping Hadrian’s Wall
Click here to read the service bulletin, including the biblical text Introduction There is a story of a young novice in a monastery who goes to his abbot and says, […]
The Manifesto of Saints — Hopping Hadrian’s Wall
The sermon for All Saints’ Day from North Presbyterian Church. This week begins our pledge drive for 2017. If you have enjoyed these sermons or come to worship with us […]
Loving People, Solving Problems — Hopping Hadrian’s Wall
Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost at North Presbyterian Church. Click here to read the biblical passage. via Loving People, Solving Problems — Hopping Hadrian’s Wall
The Scandalous Gospel of Grace — Hopping Hadrian’s Wall
Here is a recording of today’s sermon from North Presbyterian Church, Kalamazoo. Today we celebrated the 152nd anniversary of the founding of the congregation. Today is also the day we […]
Is there Enough to go Around?
The text is Mark 5:21-43 Is there enough to go around? “A great crowd gathered around Jesus.” Somebody once counted as many as five thousand (not including women and children). […]
Mythbusting: “It all depends on you”
The text is Mark 4:26-34. We’re going to do a little bit of “myth-busting” this morning. And the “myth” we’re going to “bust” today is this: It all depends on […]
Jesus Moved My Cheese
This is what Jesus does: he disturbs the comfortable, he upsets our apple-carts, he scrambles our marbles, topples our Jenga™ towers, and squeezes our toothpaste tubes from the middle. Several years ago, there was a book that came out called Who Moved My Cheese? And the answer is: Jesus.
Jesus moved your cheese. That’s what Jesus does in our lives. The only question left to us is – Are we open to letting Jesus move our cheese? Faith asks – Will you let Jesus disturb you? Will you let him make you uncomfortable?
The Eye of the Hurricane
“Sometimes God calms the storm. And sometimes God lets the storm rage and calms his child.” I first heard these words from one of my personal heroes: the Rt. Rev. […]
Freezing a Fire, Bottling a River, & Catching the Wind in a Net
God is love. God is a community. God is Trinity. This is the most central teaching of our faith. Everything else we believe is based on it. This is why we are able to say with a straight face that we believe the heart of the universe is love. Coming from anywhere else, that would sound like New Age pop psychology, but we mean it quite seriously. The Trinity is the womb from which the cosmos is born. Everything we see, everything we have, and everything we are has its origin in this network of perfect love.
And love, as we have already noticed, by its very nature, refuses to sit still. Love must be in motion, constantly spilling over its own brim, or else it is not love.
This leads us directly to the next thing Jesus tells us about love:
“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you”.
Love spills over. Love is a perpetual motion machine. The love that has its source in God’s own being refuses to stay there: it rushes out into the entire universe – continually creating, redeeming, and sustaining it. The entire universe is constantly being soaked, immersed, and flooded with the overflowing love of the Trinity.
North Presbyterian Church 