Sermons 2024 – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

From Empty to Full, Part 1: When There Is No Way

Ruth 1:1-18 Mark 12:38-44 Joan Chittister said life is made up of a series of defining moments. Some of the moments are shared experiences: the great depression, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 – these are a few of the big ones that come to mind. All of us experience them together and, not only do they contribute to the formation of who we are personally, they shape the culture we are all a part of. But other experiences are personal: an illness you experienced, a conversation you had with someone, a marriage, a job, a child – things that become part of the story of who you are. And that is what it is – a story. I think one of the defining features of being human is the search for meaning. It is important for our lives to have meaning, and so we look for it in our experiences, we make […]

Identity – Who We Are in Christ, Part 4: Citizens of Heaven

Mark12:28-34 To what can I compare this scene in Mark 12? I am remembering the experience I had about 20 years ago of being examined for ordination on the floor of presbytery. It is an experience one goes into with fear and trembling. Picture this. As you, the examinee, stands in front of the gathering, they proceed to ask their questions: Where do you stand on eschatology? Would you say you’re a premillennialist? Postmillennialist? Amillenialist? Are you more a Zwinglian or a Calvinist on the matter of the eucharist? Or, heaven forbid, a Lutheran??? Do your views on God’s sovereignty and human free will conform more to a Reformed or an Arminian theology? And then one person stands up and says, “Tell us something about God’s love.” This scribe who approaches Jesus in Mark 12 is that person. This scribe knew the answer to his question before he asked Jesus, […]

Identity – Who We Are in Christ, Part 2: I Call You Friend

John15:15 Mark 10:35-45 You’re sitting with a friend, and suddenly your friend says, “Look. I need to tell you something but please promise me you won’t be mad.” When your friend says, “promise you won’t be mad,” you know that friend is about to tell you something that is guaranteed to make you mad, right? Same situation here. Jesus’ friends say, “promise you will do for us whatever we ask of you,” because they are about to ask something from him that is really too much to ask. But Jesus plays along. “What do you want,” he asks them. I imagine him grinning at this moment. They say to him, “Give us the best seats in your glory. The throne at your right hand and the throne at your left hand. Please, thank you.” Listen, this is a weird thing for them to ask. Even for these guys who are […]

Identity – Who We Are in Christ, Part 1: You’re Not Going to Believe This

Ephesians 4:31-5:2 Mark 10:17-31 One of my sisters, when she was a very young child used to ask an interesting question. She wondered, “When am I going to turn into a boy?” She never did, actually. But young children can express some funny ideas about their sense of identity. There is a lot of work involved in developing your own sense of who you are, and this was part of the work for my sister when she was four years old. When we grow into adolescence we tend to look to our peers as a means of figuring out who we are. We want to be accepted by them, we want to be liked, and we want to like ourselves. We want to know who we are, and one dimension of that is knowing who we are not. We finished our five-week study on risks we must take for peace […]

A Season of Peace, Week 5: Only Connect

Genesis 2:18-24 Mark 10:2-16 I took my title today from the classic English novel, Howard’s End. It is a story about two families, the Wilcoxes and the Schegels. Two families who wind up in a great dispute about a house, two families whose characters are so different, whose worldviews and values are so different, they have difficulty even understanding one another, let alone coming to a resolution about the house. There is one character in the story who, alone, seems able to bridge the gap. She pleads with the others to find a way to connect the head and the heart, the prose and the passion, the yin and the yang. Only connect the different values and viewpoints. She is a Schegel by birth and a Wilcox by marriage. She stands in the middle of this dispute and pleads, only connect! It is a phrase I have always loved; it […]

A Season of Peace, Week 3: The Risk of Knowing Jesus

James 3:13-4:3,7-8a Mark 9:30-37 I read a newspaper story about a young man named Oliver who had a secret he was so embarrassed about, so humiliated by, that he went to great lengths for many years to keep it hidden. The secret was that he could not read. When he was in first grade he was suspended for a week, and when he returned to school he felt utterly lost, way behind. His home life was difficult, and school was hard, and he said nobody ever talked to him about why school even mattered. Oliver continued to struggle and never caught up. Still, he was promoted from one grade to the next, year after year, until he graduated high school – and still did not know how to read. He went out into the world, looking for a job that wouldn’t require reading skills. He couldn’t read a restaurant menu […]

A Season of Peace Week 2: A Time to Speak

James 3:1-12 Mark 8:27-38 I used to have a friend, Jim. He was a kind and big-hearted man with a great sense of humor, but he also knew how to lay down the law. He liked to say, “I prefer peace over justice any day of the week.” Particularly in reference to his three children when they were bickering about something. Jim was going to get his peace, which for him meant quiet, if those kids knew what was good for them. We began our study group last Wednesday, talking about Five Risks Presbyterians Must Take for Peace. I asked the group what they thought of when they hear someone say they just want to keep the peace. And they said it means they just want people to be quiet. This is also what the phrase, “Hold your peace” means: Just don’t say anything. The letter of James has a lot […]

A Season of Peace, Week 1: All Who Stand in Need

Mark 7:24-37 We depend to a great extent on the work of biblical historians to help us understand the scriptures better – to get a sense of the context, the best interpretation of language, and the authenticity of the many ancient manuscripts that are available. And I learned something this week that I have to share with you, something that these historians use in their work: the criterion of embarrassment. The criterion of embarrassment says this: if a story in the bible is something that is, potentially, kind of embarrassing, then it’s probably true. Some of the stories in the Bible might not have happened quite the way they are written. But if they are embarrassing, then they probably did happen like that. Because why would they make up something that might make Jesus, his followers, or the church, look foolish? By that standard, I think the story of Jesus […]

Faith Rules

James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23 There was a movie that came out in 1998 called Pleasantville. It was a funny story about time travel. But it’s also about how we decide what is wrong and what is right. There are two teenagers, David and Jennifer, who are siblings. We see in the first few minutes of the film that their lives are fairly unpleasant. They’re coping with some of the complications that might confront middle class kids: social status, drugs and alcohol, parents who have their own troubles and are mostly unavailable to their kids. Jennifer, who is played by Reese Witherspoon, is navigating these issues with some success, but David, who is played by Tobey Maguire, seems mildly depressed and spends most of his time watching reruns of an old 1950’s sitcom, Pleasantville. It’s a “Leave It to Beaver” kind of program. Way out of date, but there is something […]

When Love Offends

John 6:56-69 Once I led a group study on the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This was a good group to work with – they were mature in their faith and devoted to studying the scriptures. We were moving right along at a good clip, but they knocked me right off my rhythm when one of them said, “I don’t like this parable. It’s not right.” and everyone in the room agreed. They resented this wayward son and rejected the notion that he should be given such lavish forgiveness. It’s not fair, they told me. It’s not right. It offended their sense of justice. I once had a conversation with a fellow church member about the Sunday sermon we had both just heard. He told me that even though he usually liked that preacher, he really disliked this particular sermon. He was offended by her interpretation of the Noah story […]

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