Sermon on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Jesus has a thing for dirt. He knows we have a thing for dirt. Getting our hands dirty. Digging into soil, making mud pies, sandcastles, dune angels. Because of this, he’s a little careless. He doesn’t appear to really take the time to actually organize how he is going to work. He just does. Sort of like a Tasmanian devil. Flinging stuff all over the place because he just is going to get his work done. No lines drawn. No garden boxes. He knows his dirt, and dirt don’t hurt, so let’s cast a little seed and see what happens.

Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost - Matthew 11

Jesus is so frustrated because everyone keeps taking his ball and going home. As the fickle and faithless, we try to think that he doesn’t play at our rules so we need to leave and find someone who will play along. We thinking things should look this way or that, wanting to package our game in a certain style. Never imagining that our rules make the game of life more often worse, not better.
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Sermon given for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, July 2, 2017 - Matthew 10:40-42

“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever receives a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

Jesus is never one to get in a war of personality. He isn’t going to be one upped, compared to you or anyone, to think that there will always be someone else more impressive, more famous, more intelligent. For Christ, he really doesn’t care. The fear of the sinner is that we won’t be able to come to the gates of the New Jerusalem, at the end of days, the end of time, when all has died, and all has been made alive and say – don’t you know who I am? Because Christ will say to you – that’s my line.