RoboPreacher

it's just another damn of the damns you're not giving The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, the 7th chapter! It’s a hard saying Jesus drops on us today: For it is from within , from the human heart , that evil intentions come : fornication, & theft, & murder, & adultery, & avarice, & wickedness, & deceit, & licentiousness, & envy, & slander, & pride, & folly. All these evil things come from within , and they defile a person. That’s hard to take. Not to mention that us good, modern people; part of a social justice oriented denomination to boot, and Danish no less; aren’t even sure if we actually believe Jesus.  I mean, surly he’s exaggerating , right? We’re not that bad, are we? After all, we’re good people. Why just, well last year now that I think about it , donated to NPR.  I mean, how bad can we be? Should we dare to be so brash as to admit some amount of guilt, we’d never go as far as Jesus goe...

Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray always and not lose heart. -Luke 18:1 All too quickly another summer has past.  As September comes, we trade in the lazy summer days for the the busier cool days of the fall.  Although we do this every year, I’ve begun to wonder if there isn’t something insidious about our attitude.  Something that set Christians and the Jewish people apart from their ancient contemporaries, was their understand of time . The Romans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, etc., they all thought of time as a never-ending cycle . Each season followed upon the next, in the same order as the year before. Each year there was the cycle of death and new births to replace the deceased. Each year the Nile flooded in the spring, the days got longer in the summer, and so on.  For the Jewish people, though, time was not a never-ending cycle. Time had a beginning ; when God made the heavens and the earth. Time also had an ending ; w...

bad luck got in me, but i will survive Last sermon from Old Testament sermon series It was a big day. The Day , in fact. Finally, after years of construction, the temple had been completed . Everything was assembled with careful attention to detail. All the furniture had been brought in and placed just so, with loving detail.  The temple had finally been completed; perfect and immaculate.  Now, there was just the installation of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, the symbol of God’s very blessing. Then, after that, all there was, was just the great blessing to be given over the whole affair. Everything was finally ready; and everyone had shown up too. All the dignitaries, the elders and leaders. Judging by the crowd, it seemed like every citizen had shown up too. And everyone, from King Solomon to the poorest widow, was wearing their very best.  Then, to top it all off, the weather was just perfect. A day a lot like today . The air was ...

all has been tried, follow reason and buy A Sermon from the Old Testament After last week’s morbid lesson about Absalom’s death, it’s nice to get a little reprieve. Hearing about Solomon’s faithful request for wisdom, is the just the balm we need after what we had to sit through last week. This is some real “family values” kind of stuff today… Only, and maybe it’s just me, but this story rings a little hollow, doesn’t it ? I mean; yes, Solomon is known for his wisdom , sure; but that isn’t all he is known for, is it? …Yeah; Solomon is also known for his many wives, and his worship of those wive’s foreign gods.  While there may be a little foreshadowing about Solomon’s unfaithfulness in our reading today; this story of humble Solomon asking for wisdom, it just comes across as pretty saccharine, when you take the whole gamut of Solomon’s life into account… And that isn’t even all that rings hollow about this story today!  There’s also the obvi...

I am shy but you can reach me A sermon from the Old Testament We all live with this lie, don’t we? The lie that we’re actually good people. All of us, we think that deep down, what we are is good … Sure , we might goof up from time to time, yes we might fall from grace now and then; but deep down, we all imagine we’re all actually good. We have this illusion that we could just fix these “shortcomings” of our’s with some better ethics or with one more self-help book…  All of us, we harbor this thought that we’re actually good folks; and all we need to do is just start acting like it. Now, you’d think a few minutes with the front page would dispel that myth ; yet on it goes, so powerful is our trust in this lie… So let me be the one to bust your bubble today; we’re sinners … And , lest you think you have a leg up on those heathens out there, getting ready to party on a Saturday night or sleeping off their hangover on a Sunday morning; let me b...

If they did I'm bidding your word Continuing the Old Testament Sermon Series One of my first friends in college was an Asian-American. Once, one way or another, we got to talking about World War Two. At one point in the conversation, he mentioned how I hadn't said anything about the internment camps… To be honest, I had never heard anything about these terrible places, about that terrible part of our history, until then. It was humbling to learn about that part of our history from him.  It was then that I realized, history is never neutral. History is the story we tell about ourselves . History is the narrative we tell of who we are and what we stand for . And history, as the old saying goes, is written by the victors.  When we decide how we’re going to tell our history, we prefer our story to be black and white, we want our villains to be evil and our heroes to be upright; even though life is rarely so cut and dried … For those of you who prefer...