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2005 Sermons
2004 Sermons
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Date
|
Scripture |
Quote
|
Pastor
Jami Fecher |
| 12-03-06 |
First Sunday of Advent
Jeremiah 33:14–16
Luke 21:25–36 |
Jesus teaches us that there is a future judgment coming.
By judgment he envisions an apocalypse.
God will bring history to a visible end,
through awesome and terrifying events
in nature and in human institutions.
All the systems of power in this world will be overthrown.
Every tainted and perverted thing will be destroyed.
All unfairness, even unfairness that is hidden,
everything evil &
everything that perpetuates evil
will be appropriately gotten rid of.
Hypocrisy will be exposed.
Bullies will get what’s coming to them.
The good, the poor & the weak
will get what is coming to them. |
| 11-26-06 |
Christ the King Sunday
Daniel 7:9–10, 13–14
Psalm 93
Revelation 1: 4b–8
John 18: 33–37 |
All ancient cultures understood their rulers
to be divinely appointed.
They understood their king as god’s representative on earth.
The reason for thinking about the king this way
is because of the kings awesome power.
Kings had the power to make happen what they want.
By contrast, a common person had no discernable power,
at least none that the king did not allow.
This is true throughout most of history.
It is not easy for 21 century Americas to appreciate
how much power a king had
and how little power a common person had.
We live in a society in which we are so securely established
that we grow up with a foundational belief
that the common person does have the power
to make their will happen.
For example, American kids grow up learning
that anyone can become president.
Or anyone who works hard enough can become rich.
And we can cite example after example |
| 10-15-06 |
19th Sunday of Pentecost
Amos 5:67,1015,
Hebrews 4:1216,
Mark 10:1731 |
The words of Jesus are terrifying words of judgment
to the wealthy.
Even goodhearted
wealthy people
tend to be offended at Jesus’ teaching on wealth,
if they take it seriously.
What happens between Jesus and the rich young man
is typical of what happens between
Jesus and the hearts of wealthy people
when they hear Jesus teaching
for what it really is.
The rich young man wanted to be
more just and righteous
than he was
so he asked Jesus what to do. |
| 10-8-06 |
18th Sunday of Pentecost
Genesis2 :1824
Ephesians 5: 2133
Mark 10:216 |
God creates from love, for love
Our Lord Jesus proclaims to us today that from the
beginning God created from love for love.
God intended from the beginning that we be in
relationship to one another as servant partners
and that we steadfastly love one another
with God’s own love.
Jesus refers to the story of creation in Genesis
which tells us
God built creation
for human community.
God made a perfect place for humans to live
in perfect harmony with God, with each other
and with the rest of created order.
The Bible is very clear on this point. |
| 5-21-06 |
Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 15:9-17 |
The Gospel is news.
Translated literally from the Greek it is
a good message.
It is not a question.
It is not a command.
It is news!
It is news from invisible, eternal God of the Universe,
through Jesus Christ
to you and me.
The news is this: “I love you!”
The lesson read today uses some form
of the word love 12 times.
Jesus is speaking to his disciples
on the night he is betrayed and arrested.
Before he goes he wants them to know
he loves them.
He wants you to know, today, right now,
He loves you. |
| 4-30-06 |
Third Sunday of Easter
Luke 24:36-48 |
Christ is risen from the dead
and without your permission
God has selected you to bear witness
to Jesus, risen from the dead,
alive
and active in creation.
Jesus is alive, doing what he ever did:
forgiving sins,
justifying the ungodly,
bringing hope to the hopeless,
freeing the entrapped and enslaved
and raising the dead.
And God selects you,
as God’s special instrument
to bear witness to it to the world! |
| 4-23-06 |
Second Sunday of Easter
John 20:19-31 |
I want to introduce you to someone
you do not know.
His name is Akwilino Lokwar Lopir.
He is from southern Sudan.
Sudan is the largest country
on the African continent.
Sudan has been locked in a twenty-one year civil war between the Islamic Government of Khartoum in the North and the predominantly Christian and [indigenous]… populations of the South….
[by 2004] nearly five million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes and another 2.5 million have been exterminated through the North’s use of Antinov bombers and helicopter gunships.
|
| 4-16-06 |
Easter Sunday
Mark 16: 1-8 |
How many have heard of the Gospel of Judas?
Someone recently found a very old
story of the life of Jesus
and the author is supposedly Judas,
the one who betrayed Jesus.
Stories of Jesus’ life are often called “gospels.”
There are four Gospels in the Bible,
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Each tells the story of Jesus in a different way.
Today we read from Mark’s story.
Besides the Gospel of Judas
there are other “gospels”
but did not make it into the Bible
E.G.-----G. of Thomas, G. of Mary, G. of Peter.
Some of them say some pretty odd things.
In the Gospel of Thomas the child, Jesus,
turns his friends into donkeys for some transgression
& as a child Jesus also stretches a board
for Joseph, his carpenter father,
because he had cut it three times
and it was still too short!
But for all their weirdness these other
non-Bible documents are
are not as strange as the ones in the Bible.
|
| 4-09-06 |
Palm Sunday |
We were talking about the difficulty of preaching
when a colleague asked about images
for what it is like to preach a sermon.
Is it like having a bouquets of flowers
that you hand out to people
so that at the end you have fewer?
Is that why it is hard?
Another colleague answered, No,
her image was more like dipping from a deep well
and giving out drinks of water,
but never running out. |
| 4-02-06 |
Fifth Sunday of Lent
John 12:20-33 |
God causes the story of Jesus to be told to you
so you will hear, be changed,
be given new life.
You might not be that aware of what God is doing.
It might seem to you that God is doing nothing,
that you are not being changed.
But it is more likely that God is speaking to you,
changing you, bringing you new life
even if you don’t perceive it.
It is not easy to perceive what God is up to because… well, God is God.
God is eternal
and God s |
| 3-12-06 |
Second Sunday of Lent
Mark 8: 31-38 |
I expect this sermon to be a major bummer for you
and a deeper joy.
God’s word is like that.
The scripture I am about to read you is from Isaiah 53.
It is read each Good Friday,
as Christians commemorate Christ’s crucifixion
and our own salvation.
Christians understand this text to be about Jesus
even though it was written centuries
before Jesus was born.
It perfectly speaks our experience of the Gospel. |
| 3-05-06 |
First Sunday of Lent
Mark 1: 915 |
First Sunday in Lent is always
the story of the Temptation
(or test,
they are one
in the same word in Greek).
40 days of Jesus temptation = 40 days of Lent
In the Bible 40 is a number
often associated with
intense spiritual experiences Lectionary.org
So, the Church intends Lent to be
an intensive spiritual experience
like Jesus’ time in the wilderness. |
| 3-01-6 |
Ash Wednesday |
It is traditional for the sermon on Ash Wednesday
to be a time of pastoral exhortation.
So this is what I am doing tonight
I am urging you strongly to reconcile to God,
-from your side of the relationship-
to be in proper relationship to God,
humble and strong,
to do what you can to be
the best self you can be before God
and for the sake of your neighbor. |
| 2-26-06 |
Transfiguration Sunday
Mark 9:210 |
Other worldly
“Once upon a time…”
invites you into another dimension.
Tells you we are not talking about your everyday thing
You tune the ears of your
mind into a special frequency.
It sets you up to ask not about the literal details
but about the deep meaning.
This story of Jesus’ Transfiguration is like that.
We are carried into a holy dimension
not into a fairy tale reality, like once upon a time
but into the ultimate reality of God. |
| 2-12-06 |
Sixth Sunday of Epiphany
Mark 1:40-45 |
In the Bible leprosy has very little to do
with a medical condition of leprosy.
It has far more to do with outcast status assigned to persons
because of how they look.
The Bible talks very little about leprosy itself
but quiet a bit about lepers.
A person might have the condition of leprosy,
but lepers are created by people
who treat persons with leprosy as outcasts, pariahs.
The movie Motorcycle Diaries is a true story set in 1950’s
about two guys who take a cross country trip
the length of Latin America.
They passed themselves off as doctors
and, in fact, they were both medical students of sorts.
Because of their medical and humanitarian interests
one of their stops was a leper colony on the Amazon River. |
| 1-29-06 |
Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
Mark 1:21-28 |
Mark tells his story of Jesus by getting right down to business.
His proclamation of Jesus is brief and frillless.
Jesus is on the scene and things are happening!
What is happening is this:
In the person Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee
God has decided to make a permanent and irrevocable
move on behalf of humankind and creation.
It is God’s decisive move of utter love for you and me.
In this person, Jesus, God has decided to move against
all the worldly & spiritual powers, systems,
institutions & social arrangements
everything that is contrary to God’s good & gracious intent
for God’s beloved humans & creation. |
| 1-22-06 |
Third Sunday of Epiphany Mark 1:14-20 |
There is a sense of urgency about the way
Mark preaches about Jesus.
The book is 16 chapters short
and uses the word “immediately” 27 times.
The first sentence is not even a sentence.
It has no verb.
It is an announcement that tells us
what is about to unfold in the rest of the book:
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mark 1:1
Then, Jesus fairly bursts onto the seen,
never even bothering to be born,
but moving straight away to being baptized,
immediately going to the wilderness for a battle with the devil
and immediately upon his return
He begins his public preaching
which is where we are today. |
| 01-01-06 |
New Year's Day 2006
First Sunday after Christmas
Philippians 2:5-11,
Luke 2:15-21 |
One little name opens up a whole world of associations,
of visual images, feelings and other words
that have their own sets of associations
and open up worlds of their own.
A name also draws boundaries around a thing.
It helps to specify a thing.
It lets us know we are talking about this and not another thing.
Talking about this, and the whole world of associations
that go along with it,
And NOT that other thing and all that goes along with it.
For example, when I said Adolph, someone could have said
“meat tenderizer.”
because there is such a product, |
