Sermons on Christian living

Sermons on Christian living

Lord Save Me

Come Worship Together Live & In-person! Our Saviour is incredibly pleased to have you join us for live in-person worship back inside the Nave and Sanctuary on both Saturday, August 8 at 5:30 pm and Sunday, August 9 at 10:00 am!  Please click the “Read More” button below to get all the details, which will help ensure all who wish to worship together in person stay as safe as possible. For those who prefer to stay safer at home, join us…

Easter Sunday – April 12, 2020

Bulletin  Click here for Easter Sunday worship bulletin. A special thank you to Brad Stewart for his video recording and editing work which made this special presentation possible.  Virtual Easter Coffee Hour (Zoom, 11:30am) After service, tune in to be strengthened by fellowship and conversation with one another. Kids could show off Easter Baskets! Ladies could wear their Easter bonnet! We can’t wait to see and/or hear you! “Zoom” with us! click https://zoom.us/j/732534989 or call from any phone: (646) 876-9923  and enter Meeting ID…

Palm Sunday – April 5, 2020

Sunday, April 5 at 10:00 am Remote Worship If you can join the live service, please do. We will all be joined together in prayers and in support of each other, our community, our church and the world. Click here to watch a video of the service. Worship Bulletin Click here to download the Weekly Worship Bulletin for Palm Sunday, April 5, 2020. Virtual Coffee Hour on Sunday following the service Feeling isolated?  Going stir crazy? Eager to catch up with…

The Eleventh Hour: A Sermon for Veterans’ Day

The first time I visited France, some thirty-five years ago, I noticed a curious sign posted on the Paris subway. In each car, next to a couple of seats, it said: “Reserved for disabled ex-servicemembers.” Well, that’s the translation. Really, the seats were reserved for mutilés de guerre, literally those who had been mutilated by war, who had lost limbs or eyes or organs. Those simple signs were a sobering reminder of the fact that there were, all around us in…

Shameless Prayer

Who changed the Lord’s Prayer? That’s a question that many people ask pastors when they get us alone. At first, it used to confuse me. But I think, nowadays, I have some sense of what they mean. Most of us grew up saying the Lord’s Prayer in one particular form, with all the archaic verbs and pronouns – Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, all the way down to the kingdom, the power and the glory,…

The Valley of the Uz

Let the dead bury their dead, says Jesus. And I thought of this a few months ago, when the battle erupted over a graveyard in Transylvania. In the part of Romania where I used to live, there are whole counties that do not think of themselves as “Romanian” at all. Before the First World War, they were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they sometimes think they still are. The people speak Hungarian, their children are schooled in Hungarian; if…

National Day of Prayer – 2019

Sunrise Service Prayers from All the World and from All Our Voices, United in Love by God Matins, Psalm 95; Matthew 6:25-34; The Day You Gave Us, Lord, Has Ended (ELW 569) Listen to the birds of the air—they don’t plant seeds or harvest grain and save it in barns, but God takes care of them!  So, Jesus, that wise teacher, reminded us that God will take care of us. Let us listen to them cry out in praise to…

Let’s Kill Jesus!

Let’s kill Jesus. That’s an ugly sentence. Jesus, who hurt nobody and loved even the most wretched. How could we hurt him? How could anybody, but much less his followers? But: Let’s kill Jesus. It’s what one of his followers – one of his closest, one of the Twelve Apostles — came away muttering, just after the events of today’s Gospel reading. They were at Bethany, a few miles from Jerusalem. Mary, not his mother but the sister of Martha…

The Counterinsurgency Paradox

Ol’ Blue Eyes, Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra, was a good friend of Mr. Jack Daniels. Nor was he unacquainted with the occasional martini. He renewed these friendships on regular occasions in barrooms nationwide — gallivanting with the Rat Pack, drinking until all hours. Sinatra was such a beloved regular, in fact, that he had his own tables and barstools reserved for him, whenever he might show up, in nightclubs all across America. Which is not to say that he did…

I Am a Lutheran

Testimony for Reformation Sunday, October 27-28, 2018 Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 46; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36 I am a Lutheran, but I wasn’t always a Lutheran. I started off as a devout Southern Baptist, raised to love God, trusting that I was a part of God’s family, the church, because I had decided to follow Jesus. I loved the children’s ministries and the fun games we played and those summer mission camps. I loved the youth choirs and handbells and all…

An Execration of Pews

Wouldn’t it be great if, when you came to church, you could always sit in your favorite spot? I mean, most of us do have a favorite spot. The one we prefer, the one we sit in if nobody gets there first. Wouldn’t it be great if that seat were always reserved for you, ready and waiting? If you could leave your stuff in it from week to week – your Bible, your reading glasses, your package of Tic-Tacs, and…

A Scary Place – Easter Sunday, 2018

My life, I sometimes think, really began when I was twenty-three years old. I was working a desk job in the city, living a life of quiet desperation. One day I quit, stuffed some clothes into a backpack and flew to the Caribbean. Not one of the nice islands, either. I went to Haiti, the poorest and most violent nation in the hemisphere, the land of voodoo and secret police. I had no friends; I didn’t speak the language; I…

How Will You Die This Week?

I saw a pizza truck at the grocery store. On the side, it said, “It’s not delivery – it’s DiGiorno.” But it was delivering the pizzas. So was it really DiGiorno? I met a man once who always told lies, who never told the truth. How did I know this? Why, he told me so himself. These are paradoxes, logical games beloved of philosophers and grade-school students all through the ages. (Will Achilles ever catch that tortoise?) A paradox, say…