RoboPreacher

as i abide in peace... A sermon on Jeremiah's letter to the exiles : When you hear today’s scripture it’s hard not to wonder, “how could he say something like that.”   How could Jeremiah say that , to those suffering refugees. Because that’s what exiles are; refugees. Exiles were the victims of Babylon’s conquest program. Babylon’s official policy was to deport the citizenry of any country they conquered, back to Babylon .   Jeremiah is writing to people who watched a foreign army come in, defeat their militia, and then lead them away to live in a foreign land! People who were wondering: How . How could God let this happen? How long will this last. Questions we’ve wondered, too. Haven’t we? And what does Jeremiah say? Not to keep up hope, but to settle in! That their exile is going to last longer than their lives. And then, Jeremiah tells them, to seek the welfare of the very country that conquered them! How could he say that???   Now, of co...

silence like a cancer grows A sermon from Elijah's encounter with sheer silence, 1 Kings 19:1-18 : Have you ever been in some room all by yourself, only you couldn’t help but strain to hear something because it felt like, sounded like there was something in the silence all around you ? Or, have you ever been out in the quiet woods alone, only to feel like there was something in that hush of the woods? ( Abby , at EWALU, going through the trails, when no one was talking, did it ever seem like there was a voice in the peacefulness of it all?) I bet you have… And I’d be willing to wager we’ve all had an experience like that at one time, or another. In fact, I’m convinced the reason some folks make a point to get to church before the organist or others start to arrive, is so they can sit in that kind of silence. The silence that isn’t empty, but full . But full. It’s a universal experience; we’ve all tried to catch snatches of that sound you can only hea...