
A sermon preached on April 11, 2021 based upon John 20:24-29 entitled “The Wounds on Jesus’ Resurrection Body and What They Say about Our Wounds.” Immediately before our Gospel reading for this morning Jesus suddenly appeared to his disciples huddled in fear behind locked doors on the first Easter evening and blesses them with peace. […]

The sermon preached on April 4th, 2021 – Easter Sunday – based upon Mark 16:1-8 entitled, “Is it True?” This seems like a deeply unsatisfying ending for Mark’s Gospel. We want to holler, “Come on Mark, finish the story! Tell us some joyous stories like you get in the later Gospels about Jesus appearing to […]

A sermon preached on March 28th, 2021 – Palm Sunday – and the first occasion in over a year that people were allowed back into the sanctuary for in-person worship. The sermon was based upon Mark 11:1-11 and was entitled, “Dance, Then Wherever You May Be, I Am the Lord of the Dance Said He.” […]

A sermon preached on March 21, 2021 based upon Mark 12:28-34 entitled, “It’s All about Love; Self-condemnation Leads to the Hatred of Others” We’re jumping ahead here in the Gospel of Mark. The story we are about to read takes place in the last days of Jesus earthly life, after the story that we will […]

A sermon preached on March 14, 2021 based upon Mark 10:17-22 entitled, “An Invitation from Jesus to Experience the Kingdom of God”. There is a story about a little boy with a brand-new baby sister. In spite of the inevitable resentment a first born typically feels with the arrival of sibling, this little boy seemed […]

A sermon preached on March 7, 2021 based upon Mark 9:14-27 entitled, “Strengthening Faith; Strengthening the Life Force” Our Gospel reading comes from the 9th chapter of Mark. A lot has happened before we get to this point. I want to highlight a couple of things. Early on, Jesus has called twelve disciples and if […]

A sermon based preached on February 28th, 2021, based upon Mark 8:31-37 entitled, “The Two Selves.” The passage I am about to read includes some of the most important verses in terms of understanding this spiritual journey we are on as disciples of Jesus, and I think they are commonly misunderstood, so I want to […]

A sermon preached on February 21, 2021 – the First Sunday in Lent – based upon Mark 1:9:-15 entitled, “The Jarring Story of How Jesus Ended Up in the Wilderness.” In our children’s time we focused on the first famous wilderness temptation story in the Bible – the forty years the Hebrew people spent wandering […]

A sermon preached on February 14, 2021 – Transfiguration Sunday – based upon Mark 9:2-9 entitled, “Catching a Glimpse of the Glory of God in Jesus on the Mountaintop to Sustain Us in Down in the Valley.” In recent weeks we’ve been moving our way through the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. Now suddenly we […]

A sermon preached on February 7th, 2021 based upon Mark 1:29 – 39 entitled, “Jesus’ Agenda Is Different from the One We Would Have for Him.” We’re making our way through the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. Previously we’ve heard about Jesus’ baptism by John, his forty days in the wilderness being tempted by […]