RoboPreacher

but I won't let you run away this time A sermon on  the   call of Jeremiah Jeremiah had his whole like mapped out. He was going to follow in his daddy’s footsteps, and become a priest . He was enrolled to start seminary come fall. And even though he was an legacy, he wasn’t arrogant or entitled. He was willing to put in the work. He planned to keep his head down, graduate with good marks and then take his first call.   Jeremiah hoped his work ethic with a little luck, would land him, one day, in a prestigious pulpit. And the truth was, now was the time to go for it! If there ever was a time to go into the priesthood, it was now ; the era of King Josiah’s reforms. * The first king mentioned in today’s scripture . King Josiah had ordered renovations to the national cathedral, and during the remodeling, an old book was unearthed. Deuteronomy !   Apparently it wasn’t the most popular book in those days…   But the discovery...

here as i am A sermon on 1 John 4:7-21 Here we are, at the end of First John.   I don’t know about you , though, but I loved working though this book.   First John was a sermon first delivered to a church in the first century. And, it turns out to be just as applicable for us , in the twenty- first !   Apparently preaching on how to be church when it isn’t easy, doesn’t lose its vitality over the years… But, as much as I hate to admit it, as we come to the end of First John I can’t help but feeling like the preacher squandered the end of this sermon!   This sermon just fizzles out with all its confusing and redundant repetition… And it’s too bad, because First John is a great sermon. It’s honest and faithful. It pulls no punches. It refuses to rely on anything other than the Good News.   Only to, here at the end, break one of my most cherished rules: subtly . When I’m working on a sermon, if it feels like I’m being ...

i fight A sermon on 1 John 3:11-24 : Their preacher tells them not be surprised, or “astonished.”   But that is the kind of advice that always comes just a little too late, isn’t it? We’re always told not to be surprised, a second or two after we’ve been laid out by some punch we didn’t see coming! That’s how surprises work… And so far that’s all their preacher has told them; surprising stuff. Promises that would astonish the most stone-faced of us:   Like Jesus choosing their struggling congregation to take up residence. Like, despite losing EVERY battle, they’re destined to win the war! Believe it or not, though, that’s NOT what’s surprising the folks in the pew that Sunday… I’ve already told you how big of a sucker I am for sports movies: Rudy, Chariots of Fire, Miracle. But my favorite sports movie has to be Rocky. Especially the first Rocky, and the newest iteration: Creed.   Creed is about Apollo Creed’s son, Adonis...

i'm gonna heal you anyway A sermon from 1 John 2:7-17 After preaching something as unlikely as Jesus CHOOSING to show up in that rag-tag congregation; the elder doubles-down on the strangeness of the sermon, and tells the folks sitting in the pew that morning that they’re not just Jesus’ cup of tea, they’re also his conquerors ! His conquerors… Imagine how that must have sounded!   Never mind for a second that their congregation was beset by problems; and instead think about the list of victories the congregation had scored recently… Having trouble???   That’s because they hadn’t actually conquered anything !   At least, not yet. The congregation was still new . Too young. They hadn’t had a chance to win or lose anything! And yet , their preacher tells them, they’ve conquered the evil one… That’s like, before the closing ceremonies; before the game is even over, an official declaring the winner! If the first part of the sermo...

especially when they look like they're too far gone A sermon from the first chapter of 1 John : On Wednesday a few of us went to the documentary, “Saving Brinton,” that I talked about last weekend.   It was unfailingly charming . The guy who saved the original films was as delightfully eccentric as he was endearing. And the love the filmmakers for Iowa was perfectly clear in how they depicted Iowa and her residents.   There were even finer points of theology offered up!   At many points Mike’s faith is displayed. But the depth of it is shown as he’s giving a mini-lesson on the meaning and history of the word “cemetery.” A dormitory for the sleeping. He notes how the word cemetery came into fashion around the same time people stopped “dying,” because we started saying people “went on to their reward,” “passed away.” Stuff like that.   And I thought how Mike had learned to do what Martin Luther said theologians of the cross must, ca...