Sermons 2023 – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

Six Stone Jars: The Economy of Jesus, Week 5: Leaning into Blessing

Luke 6:17-26 Last week I had a case of vertigo that hit me like a ton of bricks. So I spent the week mostly in bed, unable to focus my eyes very well. The vertigo has gradually improved but I have still been left with little to do but rest my eyes and … think. And I have been thinking about the text for the week. About blessing and woe. About the economy of Jesus, about fullness and emptiness. About giving and receiving. There is no question in my mind that I am among the blessed – by almost any definition of the word. But when I think of the specific biblical meaning, and the unique angle Jesus presents in his sermon on the plain, this is the meaning of blessed that matters the most to me. To talk about this, I want to go back to my childhood. […]

Six Stone Jars: The Economy of Jesus, Week 3: Finding the Courage to Heal

Luke 4:21-30 As I have thought about this story, my mind kept returning to the prayer service at the National Cathedral, the day after inauguration day. It is a tradition that happens every four years, but this year it got an unusual amount of attention. When it first came to my notice, I listened to Bishop Budde’s whole sermon, where she spoke of unity, and the things that are necessary if we hope to work toward unity. It was a good sermon, but what struck me most strongly was her voice. The bishop’s voice was gentle, soft, full of grace. I was amazed at the graciousness of her voice. I also liked what she said. She suggested that there are three foundations for unity: honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, honesty, and humility. And then she closed with an appeal for mercy, […]

Six Stone Jars: The Economy of Jesus, Week 1: The Things We Hope For

John 2:1-11 When I was a child, my elementary school held a pumpkin decorating competition every Halloween, and I wanted to win so much. Competition was stiff, though. Every year you would see parents carrying in elaborate creations that took your breath away – and you knew who made that creation. It wasn’t the kid. Still, I kept trying. One year I decided I would decorate my pumpkin like a spider. So I began working on it, black spray paint, wire hangers for legs. My mother watched and offered some suggestions, but I did all the hands-on work. And I won. Well, I was elated. I could not stop talking about it for the rest of the day, about how I did this, all by myself, and I won. It was all “I, I, I.” And then my father took me aside. He reminded me that my mother had been […]

Returning by a Different Way

Matthew 2: 1-12 I want to tell you a Christmas story. It’s about a family – a mother, a father, their three little boys, and a fourth child on the way. Mother was in the final weeks of her pregnancy. On Christmas Eve the family all went to church, and on the way home the mother said to the father, “Oof. This baby is coming tonight.” So they continued on their way home. They all went in the house, the boys just vibrating with excitement. They weren’t paying any attention to what mother and father were talking about – it was Christmas! They had more important things on their minds. Suddenly, father announced to everyone, “There are reports that Santa has been seen in the area,” as he points up toward the sky. And the boys’ eyes grew big. They knew what to do. They all scampered upstairs, put on […]

Advent One: Longing and Hope

Romans 8: 18-25 Luke 2: 1-3 Of all the journeys I have taken in life, the one that stands out the most in my memory is the trip I took to Cuba with my seminary classmates. One reason it stands out was its general weirdness. First of all seminarians are weird. A bunch of people from different walks of life who all come together because they are a rare breed of individual who has heard and then responded to a call from God. All of us feeling kind of touchy and vulnerable because we don’t know where we are going physically, spiritually, intellectually. And then we are sent on this trip to a place that takes us out of whatever is left of our comfort zone. For three weeks. With zero calls or texts home. So people tended to act strangely at times. One of my travel companions turned to […]

Identity – Who We Are in Christ, Part 3: Shaped by Grace

Colossians 4:2-6 Mark 10:46-52 Sometimes in the movies, and sometimes even in real life, there are critical moments where time slows down. Moments when you notice every second of what you are experiencing, when it feels as though a message is being conveyed to you. The message is: in this moment, everything changes. I have had that feeling about our journey these last few weeks in Chapter 10 of Mark’s gospel. Time slowed down. We have not rushed through it. We have not used the Cliff Notes version of this. We have absorbed every word. Because there is an important message. And everything is about to change. He is drawing near the end of his journey. He is taking his disciples from Galilee, which was home for most of them. It was the sticks, out at the margins of civilization. But now they were leaving Galilee and moving toward Jerusalem. […]

Called and Sent: Discipleship in the World Today, Part 6 – Seeking Success

July 9, 2024
by Maggie Gillespie

Mark 6:1-13 I am making a trip to Chicago in a couple of weeks. It is a journey I try to make once a year, to see family members who are still there. I grew up in the Chicago area, so this is going home, in a way. Even though I have not lived there for 40 years. It is home also because I will be back with my people, the ones who have known me forever. And I feel pretty sure, based on my experience, that it will be a week full of love and joyful moments, and also some failures. Some amount of failure is baked into the cake when you go back home. I will have expectations of someone that won’t be met. I will hurt someone’s feelings, and someone will hurt my feelings. I will have a knee-jerk reaction to something someone says, because that’s the […]

Called and Sent: Discipleship in the World Today, Part 4 – Crossing to Safety

2 Corinthians 6:1-13 Mark 4:35-41 We are continuing today with this fourth chapter of Mark, where Jesus is teaching a large crowd. Crowds of people have been growing and following him around desperately, hungrily. They need something from him, they want something. And this is, perhaps, a thing that resonates for you. You might be reading this today because you need something, want something from Jesus. There is a detail about this section of Mark’s gospel that seems kind of important. Jesus and his new disciples are beside a lake. And the swelling crowds of people have come again. This is the new normal for him. There is no place, evidently, that Jesus can go where the crowds are not. It is as though he has been backed up against the lakeshore with no place to go. Jesus looks at the mass of people. Then he turns and looks at […]

That First Story

Mark 16:1-7 Baptized at the age of two months, I guess you could say I have been a Christian my entire life. I have been swimming in these waters ever since I can remember. And so the first time I realized just how strange our gospel story is was when I read it with a Chinese college student. I was ministering to a college campus at the time. A young woman came to me. This was her first semester in the United States. Her English was pretty good, but she was eager to improve it – and she was also curious about Christianity. So we agreed to meet weekly in my office to read the gospel story together. As we worked through the passages, more than once she stopped and looked at me. She would scrunch up her face and say, “Huh. Why did he do that?” […]

Palm Sunday – Sit Up

John 12: 12-16 It was the time of the Passover Festival. As always, the Passover would bring great crowds of Jews into Jerusalem. This was a major event in the life of Israel. The Passover is the annual remembrance of how God freed the people of Israel from their centuries of enslavement in Egypt. The story of how God used Moses to lead the people out of bondage and into the land of promise. The directions God gave to Moses, if you recall, were surprisingly straightforward, and bold. To stand before the Pharaoh and say to him simply, “Let my people go.” Certainly no one thought that Pharaoh would just say, Okay. And he didn’t. So there was a series of plagues sent to afflict Egypt, to encourage them to let the Israelites go. The plague of turning the river to blood, the frogs, gnats, pestilence, boils, hail and fire, […]

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